Now spring restores the balmy heat,

now Zephyr's sweet breezes calm the rage of the equinoctial skies.

-Catullus

It's springtime in Nova Scotia, a season I had been led to believe did not exist. When it finally stops raining in June, everyone told me, it will be summer. But we have had an unseasonable dry and warm March. Yesterday I was heading off to the gym when I realized how gorgeous it was, and made a detour to Point Pleasant Park, on the southernmost tip of the Halifax peninsula, to walk along the ocean and soak up the sunshine. Stunning.

Here's hoping it lasts and lasts, and we never get that next wave of snow that I have been hearing murmurs about.

What have I been up to this week? It has been a fairly normal week of teaching (we have moved been doing Michael Frayn's excellent play about nuclear physics and ethics - Copenhagen - in one of my classes, and the Spanish Golden Age of Drama in my other), grading, reading, and, of course, a wee bit of blogging:

Our Suspicions about Altruism - on the (im)possibility of altruism without reward and the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy.
One day you're a prisoner, the next you're a prince - in which I contemplate the dreamlike quality of college basketball fandom, and what the Spanish Golden dramatist Calderon might tells us about the transience of earthly glories.
They just followed me home, I swear... but can I keep them - in which I reflect on books acquired and feel anxiety about the memento mori that is the "1001 Books you must read before you die" list

What are my plans for this fine Sunday?

In addition to preparing for the teaching week ahead, I need to prepare for a paper I will be giving at a conference on Thursday. I'd like to finish Lord Carew's Bride, the second in a series of Regency novels by Mary Balogh, about a beautiful woman who believes she will never want to marry after her heart is broken at age eighteen by a callow, handsome, charmer of a villain. Now she is falling softly in love with a man she believes to be a good friend and (for that matter) a landscape gardener. In fact, he is the Marquis of Carew (of course!), and he is reluctant to reveal his true identity because he wants her to love him for himself. Why is he insecure about the allure his rank and fortune will hold for her? Because, apart from being not terribly good-looking, he was permanently injured in a childhood accident, and is used to families pushing their unwilling daughters (unnerved by his twisted hand and obvious limp) on him in hopes of a good dynastic match.

I am also midway through the excellent medieval mystery Mistress of the Art of Death, and my basketball season reading of When March Went Mad: The Game that Changed Basketball. I'd like to get a start on Rose Tremain's The Colour, from the 1001 Books list. And I'd love to watch more of Satyajit Ray's Aparajito, the second film in his Apu trilogy, which I started on Friday.

Happy springtime, saloners!