TWEM LIST UPDATE: 122/158 (77%) - 36 To GO!

I thought it would be easier to have the

ones I have left bolded rather than

the ones that I have already done.

I put Ancient Times and part of Medieval

at the end since I have completed it.

Medieval Times

1580 Essays+ Montaigne Auto

1588 Life of Teresa of Avila Auto DONE

1588 Doctor Faustus Marlowe Drama DONE

1592 Richard II Shakespeare Drama DONE

1594 Midsummer’s Nights Dream* Shakespeare Drama DONE

1600 Hamlet* Shakespeare Drama DONE

Early Modern (1600-1850)

1605 Don Quixote*+ Cervantes Novel DONE

1611 Psalms KJV Poetry DONE

1667 Paradise Lost*+ Milton Poetry DONE

1641 Meditations+ Descartes Auto DONE

1666 Grace Abounding Bunyon Auto DONE

1669 Tartuffe Moliere Drama DONE

1679 Pilgrim’s Progress* Bunyon Novel DONE

1682 Narrative of Captivity & Restoration Rowlandson Auto DONE

1690 True End Civil Government Locke History DONE

1700 Way of the World Congreve Drama DONE

1726 Gulliver’s Travels* Swift Novel DONE

1754 History of England, V.5 Hume History

1757 Songs Innocence Experience Blake Poetry

1762 Social Contract+ Rousseau History DONE

1781 Confessions* Rousseau Auto DONE

1776 Common Sense (T) Paine HistoryDONE

1776 Decline & Fall

of the Roman Empire Gibbon Wormsley History

1777 School of Scandal Sheridan Drama DONE

1791 Autography of (T) Benjamin Franklin Auto DONE

1792 Vindication of the Rights of Women+ Wollstonecraft History

1770-1850 (1798) Wordsworth (Brit) Poetry

1772-1834 Coleridge (Brit) Poetry

1813 Pride & Prejudice*+ Austen Novel DONE

1795-1821 Keats (Brit) Poetry

1807-1882 Longfellow (American) Poetry DONE

1809-1883 Tennyson (Brit) Poetry

1819-1892 Whitman (American) Poetry DONE

1835 Democracy in America* Tocqueville History

1838 Oliver Twist Dickens Novel DONE

1847 Jane Eyre Bronte Novel DONE

1848 The Communist Manifesto+ Marx & Engel History

1850 The Scarlet Letter* Hawthorne Novel DONE

Modern History (1850 to present)

1830-1889 * Dickenson Am Poetry DONE

1830-1894(1862) Rossetti Brit Poetry

1844-1889(1918) Hopkins Brit Poetry

1851 Moby-Dick Melville Novel DONE

1851 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (T) Stowe Novel DONE

1854 Walden (T) Thoreau Auto DONE

1857 Madame Bovary* Flaubert Novel DONE

1860 Civilization of Renaissance Burckhardt History

1861 Slave Girl Jacobs Auto DONE

1866 Crime & Punishment Dostoyevsky Novel DONE

1865-1939 (1928) Yeats (Irish) Poetry

1872-1906 (1896) Dunbar (American) Poetry DONE

1874-1963 (1913) Frost Am. Poetry DONE

1877 Anna Karenina* Tolstoy Novel DONE

1878 Return of the Native Hardy Novel DONE

1878-1967 (1904) Sandburg (American) Poetry DONE

1879 Doll’s House Ibsen Drama DONE

1881 Life & Times of Frederick Douglas* (T) Auto (Narrative)

1881 The Portrait of a Lady* James Novel DONE

1883-1963 (1909) Williams (American) Poetry DONE

1885-1972 (1908) Pound (American) Poetry DONE

1888-1965 (1922) Eliot (American/Brit) Poetry DONE

1884 Huckleberry Finn* (T) Twain Novel DONE

1895 The Red Badge of Courage Crane Novel DONE

1899 Importance of Being Earnest Wilde Drama DONE

1901 Up From Slavery Washington Auto DONE

1902 Heart of Darkness* Conrad Novel DONE

1902-1967 (1926) Hughes (American) Poetry DONE

1903 Souls of Black Folk DuBois History DONE

1904 Cherry Orchard Chekov Drama DONE

1904 Protestant Ethic Spirit Capitalism Weber History

1905 House of Mirth Wharton Novel DONE

1907-1973 (1922) Auden (Brit/American) Poetry

1908 Ecce Homo Nietzsche Auto

1921 Queen Victoria Stachey History DONE

1922-1985 (1955) Larkin (Brit) Poetry

1924 St. Joan Shaw Drama DONE

1925 Mein Kampf Hitler Auto

The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald Novel DONE

Mrs. Dolloway Woolf Novel DONE

The Trial* Kafka Novel DONE

1926-1997 (1956) Ginsberg (American) Poetry DONE

1929 My Experiments with Truth Gandhi Auto

1932-1963 Plath (American) Poetry DONE

1933 Auto of Alice B. Toklas Stein Auto DONE

1934- Strand (American) Poetry DONE

1929- Rich (American) Poetry DONE

1935 Murder in Cathedral T.S. Eliot Drama DONE

1937 Wigan Pier Orwell History

1938 Our Town Wilder Drama DONE

1939- Heany (British) Poetry

The New England Mind Miller History

1940 Long Day’s Journey Night O’Neill Drama DONE

Native Son Wright Novel DONE

1940- (1966) Pinsky Poetry DONE

Surprised by Joy (1955) C.S. Lewis Auto

1942 Stranger Camus Novel DONE

1944 No Exit Sartre Drama DONE

1947 A Streetcar Named Desire Williams Drama DONE

1947 - 1955 Kenyon (American) Poetry DONE

1948 Seven Story Mountain Merton Auto

1949 1984 Orwell Novel DONE

Death of a Salesman Miller Drama DONE

1952 Invisible Man Ellison Novel DONE

Waiting for Godot Beckett Drama DONE

1952 - Dove (American) Poetry DONE

1955 The Great Crash Galbraith History

1956 Seize the Day Bellow Novel DONE

1959 The Longest Day Ryan History

1960 A Man for All Seasons Bolt Drama DONE

1963 The Feminine Mystique Frieden History DONE

1965 The Autography of + Malcolm X Auto

1967 100 Years of Solitude Marquez Novel DONE

Rosencrantz & Guildenstein Stoppard Drama DONE

1972 Winter’s Night a Traveler Calvino Novel DONE

1973 Journal of Solitude Sarton Auto

Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn Auto

1974 Roll, Jordan, Roll Genovese History

1974 Equus Shaffer Drama DONE

1977 Born Again Colson Auto DONE

Song of Solomon Morrison Novel DONE

1978 Distant Mirror Tuchman History

1982 Hunger of Memory Rodriguez Auto DONE

1985 White Noise Delillo Novel DONE

1987 All the President’s Men Woodward & Bernstein History

1988 Battle Cry of Freedom McPherson History DONE

1989 Road from Coorain Conway Auto DONE

1990 Possession Byatt Novel DONE

1990 A Midwife's Tale Ulrich History

1992 End of History Last Man Fukuyama History

1995 All Rivers Run to the Sea Wiesel Auto DONE

ANCIENT

BC

2000 Epic of Gilgamesh Ferry Poetry DONE

800 Iliad *+ T Homer Lattimore Poetry DONE

800 Odyssey*+ T Homer Lattimore Poetry DONE

600 Greek Lyrics Lattimore Poetry DONE

458 Agamemnon*+ T Aeschylus Drama DONE

450 Oedipus Rex*+ T Sophocles Drama DONE

441 Histories Herodotus History DONE

431 Medea Euripides Drama DONE

400 Birds (Clouds – T) Aristophanes Drama DONE

400 Peloponnesian War*+ Thucydides History DONE

375 Republic*+ Plato History DONE

330 Poetics+ Aristotle Drama DONE

65 Odes Horace Poetry DONE

AD

100 Lives (Greek/Roman) Plutarch History DONE

400 Confessions*+ T Augustine Auto DONE

426 City of God+ Augustine History DONE

731 Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede History DONE

1000 Beowulf* Poetry DONE

1300 Inferno*+ Poetry DONE

1300's Everyman Drama DONE

1350 Sir Gawain & the Green Knight* Poetry DONE

1386 Canterbury Tales* Chaucer Poetry DONE

1430 The Book of Margery Kempe Auto DONE

1513 Prince*+ Machiavelli History DONE

1516 Utopia* Sir Thomas More History DONE

1564 Sonnets Shakespeare Poetry DONE

1572 Poems* Donne Poetry DONE

Poet 10: Robert Pinsky

I wanted to like him more than I did. I didn't dislike him either. I just didn't like him as much as Dove and Kenyon.

I did like "Shirt" because it told a story of worker abuse by talking about the shirt that he wears.

Here is a bit of commentary on it: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pinsky/shirt.htm

Here is the poem "The Shirt."

Poet 5: Return to William Carlos Williams

This these lines from Book III of "Asphodel, that Greeny Flower" is so profound:

"It is ridiculous

what airs we put on

to seem profound

while our hearts

gasp-dying

for want of love.

Having your love

I was rich.

Thinking to have lost it

I am tortured

and cannot rest.

I do not come to you

abjectly

with confessions of my faults,

I have confessed,

all of them.

In the name of love

I come proudly

as to an equal

to be forgiven.

Let me, for I know

you take it hard,

with good reason,

give the steps

if it may be

by which you shall mount,

again to think well

of me."

(NOTE: It is more powerful with his intended format. So you can see it in Google Books HERE)

I found this background to this particular part of the poem at http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/asphodel.html:

"First published in Journey to Love (1955), "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" came into existence during a time of nearly overwhelming crisis in Williams' life. Originally he thought of it as the fifth book of Paterson, gave it the working title "The River of Heaven," and planned for it to include "Everything left over that wasn't done or said--at ease." He began the poem in March 1952, on a hotel menu in New York City, and worked on it for nearly two years. During those years his health, which had begun to break with his heart attack in 1948 and strokes in 1949 and 1951, continued to deteriorate. He suffered another major stroke in August 1952, and knew that he could expect further strokes--any one of them possibly fatal--at any time from then on. His mental condition was likewise precarious. A bout with depression was exacerbated both by the recent stroke and by the injustices surrounding Williams' appointment as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress. The position was first offered, then withdrawn owing to allegations of Communist sympathizing, then offered again contingent upon further loyalty investigations, which were conducted but never evaluated, so that the year's term was up before Williams was able to serve. The situation tormented him with feelings of rage, powerlessness, and humiliation. On 21 February 1953, he was admitted to a private mental hospital in Queens, where he underwent psychiatric treatment until his release on 18 April.

Most painful of all, the old uneasy balance between confession and deceit in Williams' marriage to Flossie finally gave way. During his stay in the mental hospital, threatened by death and ready at last to let Flossie truly know him, he worked on poems, including "Asphodel," and wrote letters confessing past adulteries that finally compelled Flossie's full belief. The process must have been immeasurably painful for them both. Needing his wife to hold firm now more than ever, the poet must test her by buffeting and shaking her. "Having your love / I was rich," he tells her in "Asphodel." "Thinking to have lost it / I am tortured / and cannot rest." And so, in three "Books" and a "Coda," he writes to Flossie about the flower of the Elysian fields, the flower that grows also "in hell." The flower has a central meaning: "Of love, abiding love / it will be telling." In the first two Books he speaks of their marriage, their past, shared projects, triumphs, and griefs; in Book III he begs for forgiveness, but also writes movingly of desire, giving "the steps / if it may be / by which you shall mount, / again to think well / of me."

That is so deep!

Poet 9: Jane Kenyon

I remember when the Trapdoor Society reviewed one of her poems. I didn't have time to enter in or even read, but I wish I had.

I like her. She sounds like she was depressed. Yes, just looked her up on Wikipedia. She was plagued with depression most of her adult life. She died of leukemia. I love her poems.

Here is a link to her poem "Otherwise".

This is probably my favorite:

Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

-Jane Kenyon (from: http://thue.stanford.edu/jacquie/happ.html)

Poet 8: Rita Dove

I found her poetry understandable.

She was the Poetry Laureate of the US 1993-1995. (http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/)

I especially liked her series of poetry regarding "Thomas and Beulah." According to Wikipedia.com, "Thomas and Beulah is a book of poems by American poet Rita Dove that tells the semi-fictionalized chronological story of her maternal grandparents, the focus being on her grandfather (Thomas, his name in the book as well as in real life) in the first half and her grandmother (named Beulah in the book, although her real name was Georgianna) in the second. It won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry."

It is too long to quote here, but it is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_and_Beulah

Liked this quote by her and find it accurate:

"We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry. ... poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America."

Rita Dove (b. 1952), U.S. poet. As quoted in the New York Times, sect. 4, p. 7 (June 20, 1993).

Poet 7: John Donne

I know I am supposed to be progressing through Amerian poets, but I needed a godly poet after the horrendous ungodliness of Allen Ginsburg. Plus, I combined this with my day of prayer by reading his holy sonnets.

This is my favorite. Probably because I had heard it before (as many probably have):

Holy Sonnet #14

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurped town, to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy:

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Thanks John!

Didn't know this quote came from him:

No man is an Island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the Continent,
a part of the main.
Meditation XVII

Here is a John Donne website that is packed: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/

(Many of his poems are in audio form under "works.")

Poet 6: Allen Ginsberg

I listened to The Voice of the Poet: Allen Ginsberg yesterday. He wrote "Howl." He was the leader of the "beat poets" who took drugs and were pretty yucky people. That is all I am going to say about him. I am swearing him off forever from this day forward. I can see why Thelma in my kids' American Literature class only mentioned him and didn't have the kids read him.

The conclusion of his poem "After Lalon" March 31, 1992 sums it all up:

"I had my chance and lost it,

many chances and didn't

take them seriously enuf.

Oh yes I was impressed, almost

went mad with fear

I'd lose the immortal chance,

One lost it.

Allen Ginsberg warns you

dont follow my path

to extinction."

Allen, I won't.

'Nough said.

Poet 5: William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

by William Carlos Williams

Poet 4: Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg was born in Galeburg, Illinois in 1878. He was the son of Swedish immigrants, and I am the granddaughter of Swedish immigrant who immigrated to Illinois too. He was a Hobo at 19 years of age. He was in the Spanish-American War at the age of 20. He was a social democrat and was concerned for the plight of the American worker, and many of his poems reflect that.

His poems were powerful and accessible and packed a punch, especially "Planked Whitefish" (Gives you an idea of what he thought of war). I loved "Working Girls" because I imagined my Swedish immigrant grandmother going to work in Chicago in the 1920's. Here is a picture of them in Chicago when they were first married (1926)

WORKING GIRLS

THE working girls in the morning are going to work--
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Each morning as I move through this river of young-
woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all
going, so many with a peach bloom of young years
on them and laughter of red lips and memories in
their eyes of dances the night before and plays and
walks.
Green and gray streams run side by side in a river and
so here are always the others, those who have been
over the way, the women who know each one the
end of life's gamble for her, the meaning and the
clew, the how and the why of the dances and the
arms that passed around their waists and the fingers
that played in their hair.
Faces go by written over: "I know it all, I know where
the bloom and the laughter go and I have memories,"
and the feet of these move slower and they
have wisdom where the others have beauty.
So the green and the gray move in the early morning
on the downtown streets.

Sail Away

"Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain

Robert Frost Reading at the Kennedy Inauguration

Robert Frost reading it is beautiful

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

This was totally moving. A reflection of Frost reading at Kennedy's inauguration. It made me cry!

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audioitem.html?id=1712

Here is a very interesting piece of information about that original poem:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here is are the two poems:

Written in commemoration of John F. Kennedy's 1961 Inauguration

Dedication - The Complete Text

Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.
This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.
Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country'd be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.
And this is no aristocratic joke
At the expense of negligible folk.
We see how seriously the races swarm
In their attempts at sovereignty and form.
They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.
"New order of the ages" did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
'Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.
Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom's story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.
There was the book of profile tales declaring
For the emboldened politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng,
A democratic form of right devine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young amibition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.

-Courtesy of the St. Lawrence University Archives

The Gift Outright

Poem recited instead by Robert Frost at the
1961 Inauguration

The land ws our before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, Still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely; realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

The entire inaugural:

Poet 3: Robert Frost Continued

It has been a few days. So, I will continue.

I still think that probably Robert Frosts most famous poem is my favorite. I found a recording of him reading it here:

The Road Not Taken

This is something so historic about hearing his voice reading a poem he wrote. I find the cadence that he had intended. Here is the text of the poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I---

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

This is a poem so potent with meaning. What if he had taken the other road?

I couldn't find Robert Frost reading his poem at the JFK Inauguration, but Kennedy reads one of his poems about two minutes in. It is interesting:

Here is a little clip of him that is so interesting:

Slow on the Poets

I had ever intention of fnishing Frost yesterday. I did read quite a bit, but I didn't finish. I sort of had a meltdown. I was carrying some "backburner burdens" and didn't realize it until I snapped at a dear friend. I felt so bad, but she was forgiving, and I was able to cry over some hard things that are happening around me.

I am called to support a friend through a major crisis in her family. I skipped dinner with my family to be with her and just listen. It was important to do.

I wanted to crawl in a hold after snapping though. I don't like it when I do that.

Today is a better day. Jury Duty didn't happen. So, the slate is clean today.

A Very Nice Sunday

It started at 5:35 with a bit of Lady Grey

Then it turned into 3 1/2 hours in the Word

After that it was a fast decision to walk to Calvary for outdoor church

We caught up on the walk about all the exciting things from last night's BBQ

We sat in the August sunshine to listen about the woman who anointed Jesus' feet

Enjoyed the cool August breeze with George as my wind break

We saw people being baptized in the pond and took a hike up to the high school clearing

We talked with Shawn and Jim about Calvary and China

After that we walked home

We ate hummus and homegrown veggies with leftover hamburgers on yummy buns

Then we watch the first Asian win a major PGA tournament

Then I had very sad news from Teala that led us to pray

After this, George walked in the door with a 32" flat screen TV for co-op classes

He cooked pizza and Jennifer brought us peanut butter cup ice cream

Jennifer and I went for the Hospital hill walk as the sun began to fade

Then, we looked at 500 pictures of her six weeks in SEA

Then a movie about new life for an Indonesian woman

Thanks Lord for the beauty of the day

Poet 3: Robert Frost

I have really looked forward to Robert Frost.

"There are two types of realists," Robert Frost once remarked, "the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I'm inclinded to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form."

I love that!

I just started reading him last night. So, I will add to this in the days to come.

I have loved this poetic immersion. It is the only way I am going to really get through it. I have to switch myself to poetry mode and stay in it. These more relaxed days of August are the perfect days to do it. This next week is especially good for that immersion.