The first week of the summer term has ended, and I find myself with a schedule that will leave me plenty of time to complete my summer project. I hope to convert more of my course materials (syllabi, schedules, assignments, examples, etc.) to HTML so that I can post them to web pages -- not, however, to this journal site.

As usual, I'm trying to juggle more than one ball. I think it's time to take a first cut at the essay about home and the sense of place. With that in mind, I stopped at the public library on the way to work this morning to pick up some essays by E.B. White, Wallace Stegner, and Joan Didion that I don't own. I quickly found the dolce domum-like reference (my label, not White's, which comes from The Wind in the Willows) in White's essay "Home-coming." I was dazzled once again by Stegner's essay ("This I Believe") which leads off his collection One Way to Spell Man: Essays with a Western Bias. Both the White and the Stegner may become part of the project I have in mind. I selected the Didion (After Henry) because, well, she's the Didion.

I have some idea about what I'd like to accomplish in the essay -- and it is an 'essai' in the sense that it is merely a superficial and informal attempt to explain a very complex but commonplace emotion -- but I can see that by checking out massive volumes of books and planning walks and drives for photographs, I might once again be stalling. 'Tis my nature. But in this, I have no one to disappoint but myself.

Our new schedules have allowed Michael and me to schmooze a bit between classes. He stays more closely attuned to office politics than I do, so he gossips and I listen. I might gossip too, but my material isn't nearly as good or current as his is. Michael and I enjoy each other because he and I don't have to explain much to each other -- and I don't expect to have to explain that here, except to suggest that we share some views and some biases, as well as some job-related frustrations. We often use these gossip-fests to savor the cathartic qualities of self-rightous indignation, for instance. But most of all, we both appreciate Occam's shave cream as much as we appreciate his razor.

Speaking of sharp objects, next year on my wife's birthday I must remember to hide all pruning equipment. She and the furies (her mother and grandmother) passed through the yard yesterday slashing and burning forsythia and spirea, shaping them into flat-planed shrubs and destroying the more graceful, cascading shape that is the natural habit of those plants. They also chopped back the ballerina rose that had another month of bloom left -- this for the second consecutive birthday. I held my tongue in the presence of the furies, and will wait until I'm no longer seething to speak to the other about perhaps finding a new way to celebrate her nativity.

Life, despite the defacing of my plantings, is good. The cable has been out all over town today, so I am a bit anxious about the possibility that I won't be able to watch the Lakers-Pacers basketball game tonight, but I've got to figure that if that's all I'm worried about, then things aren't too bad, are they? I am so easy.

I paid 1.66⁹ for gas this week, a new record for me.

Yesterday, I finished reading Morris's My Cat Spit McGee. I was disappointed, but I probably am not his target audience, and the book was published after his death, so the manuscript might lack a final buffing by the author. Or it might just suck. I usually enjoy Morris, so I'll stick with the target audience excuse, I think.

Watched Il Postino again last night. I wasn't disappointed.

On the shelf:

Aging:
Unbearable Lightness...
Bayley, Elegy for Iris and Iris and Her Friends

New today:
Various E.B. White collections and the Stegner and the Didion mentioned in the body.

Reading:
Stegner, One Way to Spell Man