I could apologize for the time that the graduation page takes to load, but -- pffft -- only a handful of folks stop by here, so these pages exist primarily for me and a few friends and I choose to imagine them to be patient or to be equipped with fast computers. Next time I decide to create a document with so many photos, I'll think to spread the photos onto more pages. But that page will stand as it is for now, with a possible slow-load warning added to the index page for the benefit of any future wayward surfers. That sounds like a verb tense -- the future wayward.

Wednesday was a great day. I started a class at noon yesterday that might pose a problem or two because of the number of students enrolled, but when the problem became apparent, I was still exhilarated by my experience in the class I had subbed in earlier and too euphoric to handle the problem when it arose.

A few days ago, the office called to see if I would like to sub for three hours in a basic skills class, a class composed mainly of younger adults who need to refresh (and in some cases acquire) some math skills before taking the tests they must pass before entering the college or receiving financial assistance for tuition. Because I started my teaching here in just such classes and was familiar with the curriculum and because I had to be at the school at noon anyway, I took the job and I had a WONDERFUL time.

The three-hour session for the morning was on fractions. Okay, the subject matter is one that most of us sleepwalk through, but teaching it to a group like this is satisfying nonetheless in two respects: first, it offers the challenge of trying to discover just what the individual students do not understand about something that is so obvious to me, and then when the troubleshooting is done, to find a way to translate the subject into images and terms that they understand; second, the reward comes when they get it, and they often do. Folks who have felt themselves at a disadvantage academically because they slept through the fourth or fifth grade finally get it, and I, of course, get some immediate gratification in return when they do. These classes provide me evidence that what I do matters once in a while.

Afloat on that high, I went to my noon class. It was an open-enrollment class, but the enrollment should have been capped at twenty five students. Folks continued to arrive in the classroom with enrollment forms signed by counselors.

"Are there enough books?" the enrollment counselor in the room with me asked.

"We'll run out of space before we run out of books," I replied as the thirtieth student wandered about the room looking for a desk that wasn't already occupied by a student or a book bag.

"According to my information, the classroom will hold forty students," she said.

"Oh yeah? You can count desks and chairs. If this classroom holds forty then we should be able to get 25 folks into your office and another 15 into your Camry," I replied.

The classroom was set with desks and chairs for thirty, but at thirty the room would be cramped with the students and the paraphernalia that students tote with them. At twenty four to twenty six students, it might be comfortable.

I wasn't going to make a scene and embarrass her or myself in front of the students, but the class now has thirty nine students, fourteen more than our usual maximum load. The classroom space is cramped, meeker students will be reluctant to jump into classroom discussions, and the grading load will be extraordinary. I was feeling too good after the morning class to ask why the counselors hadn't requested an additional instructor so that the class could be split into two sections. At least one of the counselors must have recognized that the class was over-enrolled, but when I went in to the office today for a roster and an explanation, the roster wasn't available yet and no one who knows anything was in. Go figure.

Some correspondence and conversations -- temperate initially -- will occur after I fall out of my euphoric cloud and plop onto my high horse.

In the evening, I was home early for the first time in many weeks, so I had time to run to the public library, and to take Taylor to his violin lesson. During his lesson, I remained in the car reading Willie Morris' My Dog Skip. I first started reading Morris when he was editor of Harper's back in the sixties. I read North Toward Home (his precocious recollection of his growing up and early career) while I was in Austin, recently arrived from New Orleans, so I felt some affinity with his geographical range -- Yazoo City, MS as a kid, Austin for college, then New York. And I recognized Austin in his writing, particularly his comments on the Texas political scene of the time.

A line in the early pages of My Dog Skip stood out because it reveals something that I know, but haven't enunciated, uncovering exactly the kind of nugget of truth I read for: "I have learned that when you love somebody, you will address him or her by different names." I might criticize his prosaic language, but not the accuracy of his thought. I'd like to do something with his thought but with better language. Sometimes less is less. Yeah, he was editor of a respected magazine, and has several books in multiple editions; I teach Anguish at a community college. It could still happen.

This morning after reading a little more of the Morris book, I attended Taylor's end-of-term assembly at the elementary school. He received a brass medal on a red-white-and-blue ribbon for demonstrating the school's "Six Pillars of Citizenship" in every month of the school year, the only boy in his class, and one of very few boys in the school, to earn it.

He's an extraordinarily well-behaved kid. I don't know where it comes from. Maybe I should learn something about his father.

The kid portion of the day ended with a bike ride for Taylor and me on the campus hills.

The writer of Trotsky in Exile (one of my favorites) signed out of his journal a few days ago, and has now removed the pages altogether.

I made a quick trip to the library yesterday to pick up a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and My Dog Skip.