An Incomplete Inventory
Things I've done today
- Graded a fistful of annotated bibliographies. They are bloody awful, even after I listed the mistakes they all most likely made on the board, and gave them an opportunity to fix 'em in pen. Many of the problems are not their fault: they have never been expected to be critical and write well. Which is a pity.
- Boxed up a few more things. This weekend will be All Boxes All the Time Boxfest. I will breathe cardboard.
- Realized I have about a week of teaching left here. Holy crap.
- Taught "The Things They Carried," my favorite Vietnam story, and a very nicely written thing.
- Taught also a piece by Raymond Carver, "Cathedral."
- Realized that isolation is huge. Culturally. And getting bigger all the time. I don't know the names of my neighbors (and maybe enjoy that somehow). Life is messier than TV, and thus doomed.
- Thought about composing a poem about how I've already lost the chance to compose many poems. This poem would list those poems in brief. Failed to write that poem, adding one to the hypothetical list.
- Been very glad that I'm not buying a home right now, watching a couple of people who are, and are freaking out about it.
- Been glad I'm not being "scaled back" or nudged out of the nest of the department, but leaving of my own will for a better job. After having watched over the last two days a couple of folks who are being booted or having their assignments reduced, after years of good service, including one who has grave cancer-related health problems.
- Listened to a long rant, full of moral outrage and fervor, about "kids today" and how they dress and how much sex they have and so on, from my /19-21 year old undergraduate students/. Is it me, or has the 'grumpy old fart gap' closed somehow?
- Listened / participated in / debunked a rant about traditional canonical literature. Wherein I noted that times when people have tried hard to "teach the foundations of Western Tradition," they've often wound up with schools full of buggery where the kids were reading /expurgated/ texts that Christianized and whitewashed the Greeks. I'm for teaching the Traditions (there's lots of 'em). But only if you don't leave stuff out and don't idealize stupidly. People need a context for their thought, but they need an /accurate/ context.
- Listened to someone talk about a diet involving huge amounts of cabbage soup. Thought: 'That's not a regimen: That's being a 19th century Irishman.'
- Caught myself being clever. Resolved not to do it again.