A few things have come to my attention.

1. Two times of late, I've had advice from editors that I should cut a sizable chunk out of a longish poem. And after consideration, I've decided that they're right, the poems are better without the sizable chunk in them.

2. There are about a billion television shows on cable that I know not whereof. What are these shows? What is Chrisley Knows Best? Is it kind of like Charles in Charge? or Who's the Boss? Could you make up a little chant of three word television show titles, all of which are (maybe) subpar? (Except I really did love Who's the Boss. Shh.)

3. In terms of online shopping, shoes.

4. I have a ton of books I have never read, or only barely read. Shelves and shelves of them. They sit amongst the books I have read like strangers, like friends of friends. Will I read them? Who can say?

5. Too much to know, not enough time. Too much to do, not enough time. Not enough time, basically.

6. I have got to make a shopping plan and actually buy groceries that can be turned into something besides pasta and/or a soft taco. MUST.

7. Comfortable shoes make parking far away from one's building on a sunny but cold day seem like an opportunity to get some steps in, and not like a foot-abusing ordeal. In this regard, comfortable shoes are practically life-altering. Maybe literally life-altering.

8. Other people--students, for instance--may have a different perspective than I do on the giant and expensive community project that is higher education. And in some respects, they may be correct.

9. The last of the already cut-up raw vegetables, an apple and (again) a small piece of cheese are not exactly a satisfying lunch. But they are a postponement of ravenous hunger and as such may play a satisfying lunch in today's masque, entitled "A long long very long day without sandwiches."

Expandable.

Don't you wish, sometimes, that there was a greater elasticity in the day? A capacity, a commensurability of the available hours with the things we want to do, beyond the things we must do?

I thought this as I trudged--there's no other word for it--from my car to the basement of the library. I was on the west of the building, but in the shadow of the walk way between two tallish buildings. The sun was still low in the east. It was cold.

I thought, I will be in that basement for six hours. Because it was the truth, and also because I was feeling the tiniest bit whiny about it, at the outset.

Although I enjoyed much about them, and although I accomplished a lot during those hours, I wished nonetheless that those six hours had had a little break in them. (a lunch-sized, or even a snack-sized break.)

I wished that, in the consultations which pushed up against each other, cheek, as they say, by jowl, there had been a small sane breath, one that allowed for thought.

I thought about slowing down, to see something, to open my eyes, to find a picture, an image. To capture it, or even just to see it.

On my way out to the car at the end of the day, I saw a boy who must have cut through campus on his way home from school. He had a big branch, probably broken from a tree. He was driving it into an icy snowbank created, no doubt, weeks ago from the plows clearing the lots after the last snowfall. He was standing on the snow, dislodging divots of snow and flicking them into the air. I wasn't close enough to see them hit the pavement, but I imagine they shattered, or broke, anyway.

As I neared my car, he looked up. He smiled at me. I smiled back. He turned back to his work/play. Like a farmer, cultivating the ground? Like someone digging to unearth something? Or just like a kid, inventing a game out of a stick and snow.

Short observations.

If you have, say, twelve videos to remake, by replacing sneakily screen-grabbed visuals with legit Creative Commons-licensed ones, and re-recording the voiceovers, and maybe making the overall content a little more substantial while you're at it, and also adding captions--

(damn if that's not a long if clause)

--to repeat: if the above are the conditions under which you decide that by god you're going to get some of those videos DONE, son, it does not follow that you should start four at the same time.

Because you're probably not going to finish any of them, and then you're going to feel panicky for days.

*

I'm not complaining. But this weather, it might actually be a little too cold for the middle of September.

And thus it was that I found myself thinking today, but it's okay: it's going to get warm again. It's going to get warm again? I ask you.

*

Days are not infinitely elastic. Poems are acting like strangers.

And here I thought I had less to do, and I still have lots. Lots and lots.

*

I am looking as if from afar--from a great, great distance--at the peaches and tomatoes at the farmer's market. With longing, I think that's implicit in from a great, great distance.

*

I sometimes feel like I've said all the things there are to say on a blog. Just a feeling, not a fact, although it sometimes feels like a fact.

*

This afternoon as we walked in the chill, before the sun went down, the light and air were perfect.

*

Grading is, like, an existential condition.

*

That is all.

Ars bloggica.

We're home from walking the dog.

Me: I gotta blog. I gotta think of something to blog about.

The historian: . . . right--

Me: I don't think you understand how hard that is! Pulling a topic out of thin air.

TH: --I do get it. Because I never do it.  Whereas I, when I write, I just have to rely on . . . (rustling--he's in the kitchen, looking for an article in the paper. Or something.) . . .

Me: [what? facts? research?]

TH: (faintly)...things.

Me: [--and there it is.]

The first Monday.

On the first Monday of the new school year, I worked away at my online courses. I added stuff and linked more stuff. Indeed, the linking has made my courses more webbier than ever. Is this a good thing? Time will tell.

Tonight was soft taco night. Soft taco night has come into being because it is a dish that all the people who eat at this house can agree on. Spaghetti used to be a dish like that. But my son, who came up in a family of spaghetti eaters, is no longer playing ball. I would like to say that there are other bi-partisan dishes around here, but maybe not.

Am I the only one who feels like this election might kill her? Literally kill? I will say no more, but I think you can tell I'm not very happy right now.

This afternoon, I bought a watermelon. It's that time of year when you start thinking, I better drink all the lemonade, or This may be the last watermelon of summer. And while it doesn't sound particularly poignant, I felt a little poignant as I thumped around the watermelon bin, looking for a good one to play the part of the Last Watermelon.

Because our early summer was so travel-ish, I didn't get around to planting very many things, not until later in the summer, and there wasn't very much I wanted to plant that was still sitting around in pots in the Garden Shop at Smith's Marketplace. I hate when that happens. All that's left are sad, leggy marigolds and bedraggled petunias. But there was heaps of basil and lemon verbena, so that's what I planted. I have picked the flowers off a hundred different basil stems, to keep them going. In the heat, they look a little wilted, but every morning, there they are, leaves green and glossy, and casting forth yet another purple flower. I hear that flowering makes the basil leaves bitter. I run my fingers over the leaves, or pinch off another blossom, the fragrance on my skin.

Walked early, walked late. Finished my novel, which was good but too sad.

 is how old I will be this week. What is good about fifty-five? maybe a lot of things. This week, I will be on the lookout for these good things.

Dear Movie Studios of America,

It was certainly our own fault that we chose One Day as our Friday night movie option. However, having now viewed this film, we have the following constructive criticisms to make, in the spirit of better movies for everyone:

1. You should hire somebody who can tell you how to make a movie better, because pretty much any fool could have told you what you should have done to make One Day a better movie.

2. No amount of bad haircuts, Doc Martens, and wire-rimmed glasses will make Anne Hathaway the "plain" girl. Also, sorry and no offense, but Anne Hathaway's accent sucked. Shoulda hired a British actress.

Sincerely,

htms.

This is the end, beautiful friends, the end.

Of portfolio responding, of course. For now, anyway.

I am a tad exhausted, what with the early rising and the lightning-fast typing of comments. Over the past couple of weeks, I have composed, I think, about 120 pages of comments. That's probably more impressive than it sounds--about half of those pages have a table in which I insert comments correlated with outcomes. And there's a certain amount of recursivity in writing comments correlated with outcomes. It's shocking, for instance, how many students should strive to be "meticulous" when it comes to citation, using the "As Author X says in Source Y, 'blah blah blah'" method of attribution." Even so: whew.

In a half hour, I have a class in which there are exactly no structured activities happening--a class in which I had forgotten I would be observed (post-tenure review). I can, of course, defend this unstructured day pedagogically, but just didn't think about being observed amidst the unstructure. And how many students will there be, exactly, two days before Thanksgiving (which, as we all know, is a major national holiday and therefore students can't be expected to attend class two days before it)? Will anyone be prepared to do their genre presentations? Not that they have to, but will they be?

All these questions will be answered in the Lord's own time. Or by 2:30 p.m. today, whichever comes first. In the meantime: no more portfolios until December whatever. Tenth.