As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Happy Wednesday, Wildcats! The last day of classes is next Thursday, can you believe it? It feels so close yet so far at the same time. I know most of you are probably feeling burnt out right now, I sure am. Aware that this is a stressful time for students, I’ll keep this post short, but that doesn’t make the message any less important.

Self-care is critical for our physical and mental well-being. You’ve definitely heard this term before–it means caring for yourself. By looking after yourself and taking care of often-ignored needs, you can benefit your overall well-being and improve your productivity in the long run. The benefits of continuous self-care include improved physical, mental, and emotional health, increased productivity, better social relationships, heightened self-esteem, and decreased chances of burnout.

Photo by Content Pixie from Unsplash.com

Taking a step away from your work is necessary every once in a while. Make some time these next few weeks to take a break and relax, even if it’s only for five minutes. Do something for yourself that makes you happy. Below are a variety of ways you can engage in some self-care:

Physical:

• Work out
• Take a walk
• Sit outside in the sun and fresh air
• Eat well
• Get 7-9 hours of sleep each night

Mental/Emotional:

• Talk to someone–a friend, relative, therapist, professor, mentor, etc.
• Journal
• Stay Positive
• Volunteer
• Meet up with friends and family
• Read a book
• Do something artistic
• Watch a movie

Spiritual:

• Meditate/Pray
• Practice Mindfulness
• Practice Yoga

If you happen to be studying in Falvey on May 3, please take some time to check out our Stress Busting Open House from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Library will have snacks, fun activities, and some cute furry friends! It will be a great way to take a break from work and re-energize yourself!

Looking to get involved in making a difference? Villanova has organized a myriad of events over the next two weeks to celebrate Earth Week. Click here to look at what’s being offered and to sign up!

Rebecca Amrick is a first-year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

We are officially two weeks away from the last day of classes! I don’t know about you, but I feel like this month has been flying by. Assignments are piling up, finals are looming, and you’re probably anxious for summer break. Make an effort to take some time to yourself this week. Find some way to decompress so that you can finish the semester strong!

Image by Markus Spiske from Unsplash.com

Take care of yourself this weekend, and if you have time next week, try to take care of the Earth. Next Monday, April 22 is Earth Day, the second day of Earth Week, which runs from April 21-April 27 this year. The global nonprofit Earthday.org selected the 2024 theme “Planet vs. Plastics,” informing about the dangers of single-use plastics and undertaking a commitment to ending the use of plastics entirely. Proponents for this cause are demanding a 60% reduction in plastic production by 2040. Kathleen Rogers, President of Earthday.org, explains that “The Planet vs. Plastics campaign is a call to arms, a demand that we act now to end the scourge of plastics and safeguard the health of every living being upon our planet.”

Achieving sustainability is huge focus in efforts to combat climate change. Simply put, sustainability means meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising future generations’ ability to do the same. On an individual level, this can be as simple as changing your habits to reduce your carbon footprint. The biggest things you can do, of course, are recycle and use reusable water bottles and food containers instead of plastic ones. If you want to learn more about sustainable living and the various ways you can make a difference, check out Villanova’s Pathways to Sustainable Living. You can calculate your ecological, carbon, and water footprints and learn ways to reduce your impact.

Looking to get involved in making a difference? Villanova has organized a myriad of events over the next two weeks to celebrate Earth Week. Click here to look at what’s being offered and to sign up!

If you would like to learn more about the importance of protecting the environment and how you can make a difference, check out some of these books and film documentaries available at Falvey:

• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
• Sustainable Home: Practical Projects, Tips and Advice For Maintaining a More Eco-Friendly Household by Christine Liu-Perkins
• An (Almost) Zero Waste Life: Learning How to Embrace Less to Live More by Megean Weldon
• Food, Inc. (Documentary)
• Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Documentary)

Rebecca Amrick is a first-year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Happy Wednesday, Wildcats! We’re back with another Author Spotlight. I know life may be getting hectic as we near the end of the semester, but remember to take some time to take a break and relax. This month’s featured writer is a poet, so you can simply take a few minutes to read one poem at a time.

April is National Poetry Month, a time to recognize poets and poetry’s contribution to literature and culture. Established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now one of the largest literary celebrations in the world. Millions of readers, students, teachers, librarians, and publishers participate every year by recognizing poets and reading poetry. Therefore, it seems fitting that this month’s Author Spotlight should feature poet Carolyn Forché, who the University had the honor of hosting as a speaker last week for the 2024 Villanova Literary Festival.

Photo courtesy of Blue Flower Arts

Carolyn Forché is recognized as a “poet of witness,” a term she herself coined. She has published five books of poetry, and much of the poems in these works address political and social issues. However, her first volume, Gathering the Tribes, is a deeply personal work. It was published when she was 24 years-old and recounts experiences from her young adult life. It won the 1975 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Her next release was The Country Between Us which won the Lamont Prize of the Academy of American Poets in 1981. Forché is also the author of The Angel of History, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and The Blue Hour, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent collection of poetry is called In the Lateness of the World and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The poems in this collection meditate on migrations across oceans and borders but also between the past and present and life and death.

Forché has also written a memoir titled What You Have Heard is True, an account of her experiences in El Salvador during a time of political upheaval. Her visit to El Salvador sparked her work as a human rights activist, which can be seen in many of her early poems. Her anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, was praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.” For her humans rights work and efforts to preserve memory and culture, she was presented the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award in 1998 in Stockholm. 

Carolyn Forché is not only a poet but a translator as well. She has translated the works of Claribel Alegría, Robert Desnos, Lasse Söderberg, Fernando Valverde and Mahmoud Darwish. Her translations of these poets have received great critical acclaim.

For all you poetry lovers out there, Carolyn Forché’s work will make you think and feel as she ties the political and poetic together to create memorable, though-provoking, and heart-wrenching poems.

Rebecca Amrick is a first-year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

I hope you all had a restful few days this Easter Break, because we’re finally in the home stretch! Keep pushing through your assignments and exams because the last day of classes is just four weeks away. It’ll be here before you know it!

Until then, enjoy the warm spring weather and the colorful flowers. I mentioned in a previous blog post how I love sitting outside during the spring and summer reading a book. Being out in the fresh air, under the warm sun, taking in the surrounding scenery allows me to be present with the moment and to enjoy it. I find springtime especially beautiful with all the leafing trees and blooming flowers. During this season, there’s nothing quite like cherry blossom trees, whose flowers bloom for only a few short weeks.

Japan is known for its cherry blossoms and its annual cherry blossom festivals. These festivals are known as Hanami, literally “viewing flowers,” and are an ancient tradition dating back over 1,000 years when Japanese aristocrats made a habit of viewing cherry blossoms which inspired them to incorporate the flowers in poetry and works of art. Today, people in Japan make looking at cherry blossoms an all-day event. Every year, thousands of people visit parks all throughout Japan’s countryside to picnic beneath the colorful flowers, eating food and drinking sake. Some people bring home-cooked meals, others have barbecues there in the park, and some even order take-out. These festivals are incredibly popular, and Japan’s Golden Week–its busiest travel season starting at the end of April and going into the beginning of May–usually lines up with the blooming of cherry blossoms.

Image by Mark Tegethoff from Unsplash.com

I mentioned that cherry blossoms don’t last long, usually no more than two weeks. Because of their fleeting nature, they have become a symbol of beauty’s temporality. The flowers are often depicted in art to represent the Japanese sentiment mono no aware, translated literally as “the pathos of things” but also taken loosely as “the beauty of things passing,” an understanding that nothing lasts forever.

In America, the most famous cherry blossoms are those in at the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., the site of the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival. This year’s festival will run from March 20-April 14. The cherry blossoms first arrived in 1912, when Japan gifted 3,000 of these trees to the United States as a symbol of friendship between the two nations. The first two seeds were planted on March 27, 1912, by First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, the wife of the Japanese ambassador. Three years later, the United States reciprocated the gesture by sending dogwood trees to Japan.

Today, the festival attracts over 1.5 million people to view the flowers and attend any of the festival’s numerous events. Sadly, due to increased flooding of the Tidal Basin, 158 cherry blossom trees will be cut down later this spring as part of a project to raise the basin’s sea walls as well as portions of the walkway. Even while construction goes underway, the northern and eastern sides of the Tidal Basin will remain open to the public. And after the project is complete (aimed to be finished in 2027), 274 new cherry blossom trees will be planted to replace the ones cut down.

Rebecca Amrick is a first-year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Happy Wednesday, Wildcats! Today marks the beginning of Easter Break at Villanova. Enjoy the long weekend and use these days off to rest, relax, and recharge because once we come back, we’ll be in the final stretch of the semester. Read a book, watch a movie, binge watch that Netflix series you’ve had your eye on, or just catch up on some much-needed sleep. Here’s a list of fun and uplifting movies to watch if you’re looking for a way to pass the time:

Movie Poster from IMDb

Mamma Mia!

Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried star in this 2008 musical featuring a free-spirited hotelier in Greece and her young daughter Sophie. As she prepares to get married, Sophie invited three of her mom’s past lovers to the island in the hopes of finding her father and having him walk her down the aisle. This film is available at Falvey through their DVD Collection and is also currently streaming on Netflix.

Movie Poster from IMDb

A League of Their Own

Based on a true story, this movie tells the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which formed during World War II after all the male baseball players went off to war. Tom Hanks stars as a washed-up baseball player who is enlisted to coach one of the new All-Girls Teams. Falvey has this film on DVD, but you can also watch it on Hulu and Peacock.

Movie Poster from IMDb

Big Fish

This film directed by Tim Burton is based on the 1998 novel about a dying father and his son. Edward Bloom’s fantastical tales have always put distance between him and his son Will, who now wants to make an effort to understand his father better. You can watch this movie through Falvey’s streaming service.

Movie Poster from IMDb

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

This movie follows its titular character and his friends on their many adventures after they skip school one day, available at Falvey on DVD.

Rebecca Amrick is a first year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Happy Wednesday, Wildcats! Spring is officially here! Yesterday, March 19, was the first day of spring. We’ve already had some warmer weather, and flowers are starting to bloom. Take some time to sit outside this week and enjoy the spring weather.

There’s nothing I love more than sitting outside reading a good book. Villanova’s campus is great because there are so many benches and chairs to sit on as well as large green spaces perfect for pulling out a blanket to lie down on. If you don’t have any books to read, might I suggest any novel written by Jane Austen?

This month’s Author Spotlight features renowned English novelist Jane Austen. Born on Dec. 16th, 1775, Austen wrote six complete novels during her lifetime before her death in 1817 at age 41. Her literary works are distinctly modern in their creation and exploration of ordinary characters and daily life in 18th and 19th century England.

Image from Archive Photos/Getty Images

Austen was the seventh out of eight children and only one of two daughters. Her father was a reverend who fostered an environment of learning. Although her family was large, they were close and affectionate with one another. Creating and acting out plays together was a favorite pastime for the family. By the time she was 12, Austen began writing her own stories. This collection of writings filled three whole notebooks and became known as her Juvenilia.

The first of her works to be published was Sense and Sensibility which was published in October 1811 and received immediate success and praise as the first edition completely sold out by 1813. This book tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, who move into a relative’s country estate after their father’s death.

Perhaps Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice (1813) was another instant success. This story follows Elizabeth Bennet, the daughter of a country gentleman, and the hate-to-love relationship she has with wealthy landowner Mr. Darcy.

Mansfield Park was the next book to be introduced to readers. Published in 1814, this novel was not received as well by critics as Austen’s earlier novels, but it was still incredibly popular with the public and actually became one of Austen’s best-selling books at the time. Mansfield Park is the most serious of her novels as it incorporates a discussion of religion and religious duty through the moral strength of its heroine, Fanny Price.

Austen’s Emma (1815) was the last novel to be published during her lifetime. A more comedic tale, Emma tells the story of its namesake, Emma Woodhouse, and the successes and failures she experiences in her attempts at matchmaking.

Fun Fact: Did you know that the 1995 film Clueless was actually inspired by Emma and is a contemporary take on the novel?

Image by Leah Newhouse from Pexels.com

Jane Austen’s final two finished novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were both published posthumously in 1817. Northanger Abbey satirizes Gothic novels through its heroine Catherine Moreland, whose love of Gothic thrillers influences her interpretations and clouds her rational judgement. Persuasion is about reawakened love and second chances when Anne Elliot meets her old love Captain Wentworth after rejecting his marriage proposal seven years prior.

Jane Austen’s literary masterpieces are still incredibly popular today, inspiring numerous movie adaptations and television shows and cementing their place in the English literary canon among the classics. Her stories all feature strong women engaging in journeys of self-discovery and finding enduring love in the process. Witty, light, realistic, and written in elegant prose, these novels have entertained readers for centuries. If you’re looking for something fun to read this spring, I definitely recommend a novel by this much beloved author.

Rebecca Amrick is a first year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Welcome back to campus, Wildcats! I hope you all were able to relax over the break and are coming back refreshed and ready to take on the semester again. If you’re not, no worries! Easter break is two weeks away, so just keep pushing through!

Deck yourself out in green to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this Sunday, March 17th. In honor of this day dedicated to celebrating all things Irish, I thought I’d write about a popular figure of Irish culture: Leprechauns.

Tales of leprechauns emerged in Irish folklore in the eighth century, supposedly originating from legends of small water sprites in Celtic mythology. Their name comes from the word “luchorpán,” meaning small body, as these creatures were said to be around two or three feet tall.

Image by Francis Tyers from WorldHistory.org

The leprechauns of medieval Ireland are very different than the ones we know today. Firstly, these figures were originally dressed in red, not green. As their depiction evolved, their attire was changed to green. Scholars theorize this occurred due to the general popularity of the color in Ireland. Leprechauns were also solitary male faeries or goblins that were old, wrinkled, ugly, and of a solemn disposition, not the youthful, cheery, red-cheeked creatures we know today. They were also figures of mischief and trickery, said to deceive humans and warn against greed.

Some aspects of the legend remain, though. In traditional lore, leprechauns were guardians of hidden treasure–the iconic pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. However, this hidden gold was impossible to find on one’s own, so you had to catch a leprechaun in order to be led to the treasure. Catching a leprechaun was a difficult task by itself; these creatures are incredibly agile and expert in evading traps. If one successfully captured a leprechaun, they would have to keep him in sights at all times or else he would not reveal the location of his treasure.

If you’d like to read some stories about leprechauns or are interested in learning more about Celtic mythology and Irish folklore, check out some of these texts below that are available at Falvey:

Image by Judith Chambers from Unsplash.com

• The Loneliest Leprechaun by Terry Harris
• Moorli and the Leprechaun by Jack Davis
• Celtic Mythology by J. A. MacCulloch
• Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes  by Philip Freeman
• Irish Folk Lore: Traditions and Superstitions of the Country, with Humorous Tales by John O’Hanlon
• Irish Life and Lore by Séamas Ó Catháin

Rebecca Amrick is a first-year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Wishing you all a wonderful spring break! Take this time to relax, hang out with friends, spend time with family. You deserve a rest after all the hard work you’ve put into the semester so far.

Photo courtesy of University of Iowa

March doesn’t just signify the arrival of spring break (and the coming of spring), it also marks the beginning of Women’s History Month, which runs from Mar. 1-Mar. 31. This observance first began in California in 1978 as a week-long celebration. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter made the first Presidential Proclamation declaring a week in March as National Women’s History Week. In 1987, Congress passed legislation that designated March as Women’s History Month. Since then, this month has been a time to remember and celebrate the achievements of women throughout American history.

Whether you’re traveling or chilling at home over break, if you have some free time, check out some of these books to read in celebration of Women’s History Month. For your convenience, all these texts are available online through Falvey:

•  Circe by Madeline Miller
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• Women in Myth by Bettina L. Knapp

Happy reading! Enjoy the rest of the break, and I’ll see you all next week.

Rebecca Amrick is a first-year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Happy Wednesday, Wildcats! March is almost here, which means spring break is right around the corner! I wish you all a safe, relaxing, and fun week off. Enjoy it, I know I will!

I don’t know how many of you noticed, but this year is a leap year! That means this year will last 366 days and the month of February is 29 days instead of the usual 28.

Fun Fact: Did you know that Ireland has an old tradition where women can propose to their boyfriends on Leap Day, Feb. 29? This day is known as either “Bachelor’s Day” or “Ladies Privilege.” Not only that, but according to Irish folklore, any man who rejects a proposal must compensate the woman with a gift—either a kiss, a silk gown, or gloves. This tradition is the premise for the 2010 movie Leap Year, starring Amy Adams, which you can get through Falvey’s Interlibrary Loan Program.

Image by wongmbatuloyo from iStock.com

But why do we have leap years? Basically, the purpose of a leap year is to keep our calendars aligned with Earth’s revolution around the Sun. We attribute one year to the amount of time it takes for the Earth to make a complete revolution. The Gregorian Calendar has 365 days in a single year, but in reality, it takes Earth approximately 365.242189 days to circle the Sun, which leaves an extra 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds unaccounted for in our calendar. That means we’re getting behind Earth’s orbit by almost 6 hours every year, so we add a day every few years to make up for this extra time.

People tend to think leap years occur every four years, but this is actually not true! Julius Caesar, the Roman General who first introduced the concept into western calendars, established the formula that a leap year should occur every four years. However, this led to too many leap years in the Julian Calendar which placed religious holidays out of sync with fixed dates such as equinoxes and solstices by several days. Pope Gregory XIII developed his own calendar, the Gregorian Calendar, in 1582 to fix this error. His new formula determines whether a leap year should occur based on three criteria:

1. The year must be divisible by four
2. If the year can be evenly divided by 100, then it is not a leap year; UNLESS
3. The year is also evenly divisible by 400—then it is a leap year

So there you have it, the long and somewhat complex history and understanding of leap years boiled down into a few paragraphs. An occasional event that we all take for granted has some interesting history and a bunch of science behind its origin.

Rebecca Amrick is a first-year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Happy Wednesday, Wildcats, and welcome to a new segment I’m introducing into the Cat in a Stax Blog: Author Spotlight. I love to read, it’s probably one of my favorite pastimes. And as an English grad student, I’m constantly introduced to writers and texts I might not have otherwise have heard of, let alone read. I want to use this platform to expand your readership and hopefully help you discover some new interests in literature. Every month, one Cat in the Stax post will be dedicated to informing about and celebrating a  writer whose work is available at here at Falvey. Our very first featured author? Zadie Smith.

Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images

Zadie Smith is a British writer whose work includes novels, essays, and short stories. She was born in London, England on Oct. 27, 1975 to a Jamaican mother and an English father. She studied English Literature at Cambridge University and graduated with her B.A. in 1998. In 2010, she became a tenured professor of Creative Writing at New York University. For Smith, fiction is “a medium that must always allow itself . . . the possibility of expressing intimate and inconvenient truths.” She explores many of these truths in her work, which often ponder questions of race, religion, and cultural identity.

Her debut novel, White Teeth, was published in 2000. It explores a contemporary multicultural London through the lives of three different, but connected, families. The book was an immediate literary sensation and won many awards, including the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book). Her second book, titled The Autograph Man, examines loss, obsession, and the nature of fame. This book won the 2003 Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Fiction. It was also this same year that Granta magazine named Smith as one of 20 “Best of Young British Novelists” and published her short story Martha, Martha in their 2003 issue. On Beauty is Smith’s third novel (published in 2005), and tells the story of two families living in the fictional town of Wellington, Massachusetts. On Beauty won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Smith is also the author of NW, a story focused on the friendship between two women in London that is tested by the trials and tribulations of adulthood, and Swing Time, which follows the lives of two aspiring dancers whose lives take drastically different turns. Smith’s most recent book, The Fraud, is set in Victorian London and based on the historical Tichborne Trial. The Fraud can be found on Falvey’s new Popular Reading Shelves.

Zadie Smith’s work includes essays and short stories as well. A collection of her short stories was published in 2019, titled Grand Union. She has three essay collections: Changing My Mind, Feel Free, and Intimations. Smith also wrote a play called The Wife of Willesden, a reimagining of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale from his Canterbury Tales.

If you’re looking to read something different that will make you think, definitely check out this incredible and prolific writer!

Rebecca Amrick is a first year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.