Dark at Five
Spent the day grading papers. Got depressingly few done. I had my students write about this David Brooks column in the New York Times, "The Revolt of the Nihilists." It was my "text wrestling" essay. It perhaps wasn't the easiest piece of writing to grapple with for my students. Brooks wrote on deadline in the middle of the economic crisis and didn't connect all the dots or fill out the background in his sharply written opinion on the House of Representatives' first vote on the bailout bill -- a no vote. Text wrestling in general (literary analysis by another name) is challenging for the students. But this had the added challenge of containing a lot of political shorthand and some high level economic concepts. Some students were able to bite off pieces and run with it, but others got a bit swamped.
L., A. and I went for an afternoon walk up to Poet's Seat. It had been partly to mostly cloudy all day. And I had been inside most of the day. On our walk, the sun was mostly hidden, but when we were up at the tower, it peeked out between the mottled clouds. I was holding A. and pointed it out to her. I don't know whether it was the sun or the wind -- it was windy up there -- but she giggled and squealed. That little peek of sun was all I'd get. It disappeared after a moment and it's dark now. That's late fall for you. Most of the leaves are down and the days are growing shorter and shorter.
L., A. and I went for an afternoon walk up to Poet's Seat. It had been partly to mostly cloudy all day. And I had been inside most of the day. On our walk, the sun was mostly hidden, but when we were up at the tower, it peeked out between the mottled clouds. I was holding A. and pointed it out to her. I don't know whether it was the sun or the wind -- it was windy up there -- but she giggled and squealed. That little peek of sun was all I'd get. It disappeared after a moment and it's dark now. That's late fall for you. Most of the leaves are down and the days are growing shorter and shorter.