Sally O'Brien

@sallyohbrien.bsky.social

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Perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder.

οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἔτ’ ἄλλος ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ’ ᾿Οδυσσεύς.

she/her

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In the past year I’ve become fascinated with the Lincoln Institution, a boarding school for Indigenous children à la Carlisle that operated in Philly in the 1880s-1900s. Part of what fascinates me is how the people who ran the school clearly were in it for clout, and this felt immediately familiar.

absolutely love when the journal that rejected yr poems so kindly a couple years ago, and said they’d be happy to see more work from you, rejects your newest submission with the swiftness of a garage door crashing down, and a form letter

today my students were discussing a short story where the protagonist bashes somebody with a shovel for stealing food & selling it on the black market, creating food shortages for everyone else. most of them agreed that the shovel bashing was justified. wonder what they would think about this case.

A juror was dismissed after reporting that a woman dropped a bag of $120,000 in cash at her home and offered more if she would vote to acquit seven people charged with stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic

Juror says someone left her bag with $120,000 cash and promise of more if she’ll acquitwww.nbcnews.com She was serving on a case involving seven people charged with stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic.

Four years ago in the haze of the early pandemic I started a Zoom reading group with the stated goal of reading / rereading the entire Odyssey in Greek. Today, we finished it! I don't know how many books would hold up to that kind of agonizingly slow rereading but the Odyssey definitely does.

I haven’t spent a ton of time in hospitals in my life, so I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that only the VA has posters on the wall every 6 feet about how SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS UNACCEPTABLE and WOMEN VETERANS ARE VALUED, let’s make this a SEXUAL HARASSMENT FREE WORKPLACE!

Today I saw one of my students (her family is from Laos) in the hallway and asked her if she knew who Henry Kissinger was (she didn’t) and then I explained it and told her he died and she was like YEAH! so just remember we can keep the spirit of Henry Kissinger’s death day alive for the whole year!

I would like to just…suggest, into the void, that anyone who publishes a book advertised as a critical, timely analysis of motherhood / “mom internet” culture, should also be upfront with the reader about how their husband’s corporate job as VP of marketing is funding the whole operation.

I've been working on a bunch of translations of NSFW Latin poetry (mostly Martial, my fave) and just sent one out into the world 🙃

it is such bullshit that every single family with a child in Philly public schools has to personally get someone at their kid's #phled school to generate a letter on school letterhead to certify their child's enrollment & eligibility for the Affordable Connectivity Program.

Thank you for your service and enjoy the free entree at Applebees!

A Secret War, Strange New Wounds and Silence From the Pentagonwww.nytimes.com Many U.S. troops who fired vast numbers of artillery rounds against the Islamic State developed mysterious, life-shattering mental and physical problems. But the military struggled to understand what ...

“You come home from your meeting, your clinic, make coffee and look in the mirror And ask yourself once more what you did to bring about the dark times.” —Marilyn Hacker

I looked at the next round of student essay responses: one was likely at least heavily assisted by AI (and had no examples from the text), & one was partially plagiarized (just tangentially related garbage from the Internet with examples from the text sticking out like green cherries in fruitcake).

The peculiar absurdity of checking email after a weekend away and seeing all the following messages : 1. “It is Wellness Week. Please make sure you are caring for yourselves this week.” 2. “We have 6 teachers out today so please don’t call out unless it is an emergency.”

ugh I can’t leave the Other Place because where else will I post impassioned 15-tweet threads, with receipts going back a decade, every time a fraudulent charter school shuts down or some other familiar outrage occurs in #PHLed?

not to wade too deeply into the Science of Reading discourse, but this year, for pretty much the first time I have students— plural—who are struggling with decoding skills kids are supposed to master in 1st or 2nd grade…

TFW a kid comes to you about a poem they want to write and you just end up nerding out at them, first about metaphors, and then about neutrinos and the neutrino detector telescope that they built in the middle of the ice cap at the South Pole

only Homer, and by extension Emily Wilson, could get me to leave my house on a school night, but it was 100% worth it. the timing of her Iliad release is excellent also b/c it means I can use the Wilson translation this winter when I teach excerpts to my poetry class.

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