HOME

Greetings. I am one of the 'new' bloggers on TheStoryTellersInkspot, though I've been on the Hamline faculty since July '08.

Today has been yet another jampacked residency day of scintillating lectures and panels from faculty and students alike. My mind is brimming over with it all. We have one more day to go, and home is on all of our minds.

For this reason, Daniel's lecture, "The Search for Home In Children's Literature," has struck a chord. One tends to think of home as a physical dwelling, and of course we are all longing to return to our own familiar dwellings, full of comfortable personal possessions and hugs from those who have missed us. But, as Daniel pointed out, home is also (and frequently for children) made of friends, community, support, and acceptance, and that the ideal protagonist will leave home and then return changed. Isn't that what we have created here in this snowy, chilly landscape, on the Hamline campus, and even in the Radisson hotel in its barren industrial setting? As I begin to get the glimmer of seeing my dogs again, of being with my loved one, as I experience the thrill of shoving my dirty laundry into my suitcase and figuring out which shuttle to take to the airport Monday morning, I realize I may be going home, but I am also leaving home. The folks here are friends and colleagues with whom I belong. We all belong here--our common interests, struggles and epiphanies bond us and make a home.

And don't worry we still have one more reading, two lectures, a faculty meeting, a master's class (for those graduating), a graduation ceremony, and a final dinner to go, before we leave this home and return, forever changed, to the home from where we came.