In the middle of the middle.

Week seven of the semester is actually almost half way. Almost. Halfway is such a nice word. Halfway is when you reach minute twenty of a forty minute stint on the treadmill (divisible by five, four, two, ten) (and one). Halfway is when you've done six of your twelve-in-a-row consultations with students. Halfway is, regrettably, when you've eaten your ice cream cone to the point where the ice cream is level with the cone (this is a judgement call, but this is, after all, my blog).

However: halfway also means

• grading all  the revisions, even the ones that haven't yet been drafted
• reading and ranking all the job applications
• planning 80% of the five year program review
• going to an as yet undefined number of curriculum committee meetings
• writing two conference presentations
• finishing several tenure reviews

and so on.

Between now and the end, I will do all of the above--all of it, there's no way round but through--and I will also

• go to Tampa
• go to Minneapolis (and the Walker Art Center, yo!)
• keep teaching my wonderful, unpredictable students, and in the process
• read more poetry, theirs and others'
• watch more light materialize every single day
• see tulips and daffodils bloom in my yard
• watch the rose bushes come into leaf
• catch the lilacs blooming

and maybe I will

• read a few books, God willing,
• write a few poems,
• etc.

I was feeling overwhelmed when I started all this bulleting and right now I feel quite a bit better. That's because I'm just about to 

• go to bed. Which I hope I'll do 
• a lot of in the next seven or eight weeks.

The politics of politics: a sentence.

All politicians--the straight-talkers, the hope-mongers, those going negative, the so-called principled ones, the focus-group-watchers, the great orators, the clunky orators, the thrilling ones, the plodding ones, the ones you kind of like even though they support things you truly don't believe in, the ones you wish were a lot more progressive than they are, the ones who kind of sound progressive even though they're really not--are just politicians, at the end of the day: in the deepest part of their souls, they just want to get elected or re-elected.