I never know whether to make excuses for unintended blog absences or just to march on with content. But if you’ve been disappointed by my lack of posts I apologize. Sometimes things come up and the Internet is the last place you want to be (although there seem to be great bloggers who manage to just slog through whether it’s sickness or birth or death—I’m not sure how they do it).

I’ve been busy teaching recently, ironically, since it’s the end of the school year, but young minds need to lean over the summer too. I love teaching middle school kids, I love teaching the process of writing in a systematic way that gives the kids a structure to hold on to and depart from when they’re ready, but sometimes I wish I could say “just write something, tell me what you think.”

I have an addiction to windows AND tabs, which make up a horrible “system” in which I catalog my “to do” and “to read” etc. I typically have so many at all times that I can barely run Word, which is silly. Some friends and family are traveling far away, and in the interest of being able to open Skype, I’ve begun hacking away at these windows and tabs. Sometimes I think I should just close all of them—if I haven’t read this stuff yet am I really going to? and will my life truly be improved by it?

But not being able to just close them all without looking back, the first thing I read this morning was Oxford Tradition Comes to This: ‘Death’ from the May 27, 2010 New York Times (almost 30 days on queue to be absorbed by me). No longer will applicants to All Souls College be asked to write an essay based on a single-word prompt.

If, as Sir John Vickers says, the exam has truly not been of use in recent years, I support the decision, but I might have to lift the Oxford tradition for my own teaching. Watch out seventh to twelfth graders everywhere.

Past words, chosen by the fellows, included “style,” “censorship,” “charity,” “reproduction,” “novelty,” “chaos” and “mercy.”

Corn is in season, but artichokes go to flower this time of year if you don’t pick them just as they mature. Look out for flowering artichokes in your neighborhood. They’re all around Rockridge. This one is my mother’s (Pasadena):

This Saturday June 26th I’ll be at the Gala Fundraiser for Open Opera. Most famous for their immensely popular production of the Marriage Figaro in John Hinkel park last summer, Open Opera is the new Bay Area-based professional opera whose mission it is to bring free opera to audiences in our public parks.

This summer Open Opera brings us concerts in Live Oak Park and the Orinda Community Center Park in addition to their full-length production of Don Giovani for two weekends this August in John Hinkel park. See all future events by clicking here.

Tickets are still available for the gala celebration and silent auction fundraiser on Saturday, June 26, from 5 to 7 PM in Berkeley. There will be live music (jazz and opera), great food and wine, a silent auction, and opportunities to meet and greet other supporters of the only local nonprofit offering accessible and free outdoor opera in local parks. Tickets are $75 per person. Should you be interested in joining us please contact Executive Director Ellen St. Thomas at 510-547-2471 or ellen@openopera.net.

A new independent news group called The Bay Citizen was “founded in 2010 as a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to fact-based, independent reporting on civic and community issues in the San Francisco Bay Area” and is now responsible for the majority of the content on the Bay Area pages of the New York Times. One particularly talented young reporter named Richard Parks wrote Embargoing Arizona Proves to Be Not So Easy, which ran in Sunday’s New York Times. Parks has previously reported on the California gubernatorial race, the Freedom Flotilla, the Mesherle trial, and Martinez’s beaver population for the Bay Citizen in addition to writing for McSweeney’s and Salon.