Wednesday, May 30, 2001
I haven't been writing, but during this slow week I have been reading, breezing through Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. I never made it through In a Sunburned Country because, I think, I was expecting something more McPhee-like but found instead a book that tried to be a little too cute for my mood at the time. This time, however, Bryson struck me just right.
Seeing the conclusion of Bryson's Appalachian tale looming, and hoping to keep up the reading momentum, I headed to a bookstore last night after supper because I could find nothing compelling unread on my own shelves. (I did, however, dig out a copy of Watership Down for Taylor to take on.) The bookstore was pushing Anton Myrer's Once an Eagle for summer reading, a book that has been on my somedaymaybe list for about two years, ever since the New York Times ran a story about military leaders using it as a leadership-training tool. It contrasts the selfless leader whose chief concern is the welfare of his troops and the opportunistic leader concerned only for his own career. I walked around the store for about thirty minutes with nearly 1300 pages of Myrer in my grasp, until I came across Kathleen Norris's Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, another book that has been on my somedaymaybe list for a few years. Ms. Norris's book came home with me; Myrer's 1300 pages can wait.
I've added a photo of another coiffure-challenged figure in the album, under the "buffalo" link.
7:00 AM CDT (GMT -5)
Friday, May 25, 2001
On Wednesday night
, I caught Taylor in quiet moment as he finished some homework, nearly the last homework of this school year. I asked him if he was looking forward to the end of school and to the start of the summer break (which begins today at noon). He replied that he isn't really that excited because he likes school and because, he said, "I like the way my brain feels when we do math. Adrenalin, endorphins, something feels really good."
Sheesh.
8:00 AM CDT (GMT -5)
Saturday, May 12, 2001
On Thursday, Josh completed his finals, moved out of the dorm, and reclaimed his room at home. Until we and he adapt, his move home will crowd the household as we jockey for hot water (no one in this household but me seems able to clean up in less than fifty gallons of hot water), reading lamps, and Internet connectivity.
The return of Josh and his computer for the summer might bestir me to change our current dial-up ISP to a service that will allow multiple, simultaneous connections, but I'm postponing thinking about that. This machine is finally free of most of the conflicts it had previously (or at least I understand and can manage the conflicts), so I am reluctant to make a change (for example, by adding a network card) that might upset things.
On Monday, Josh will begin working at the Pathfinder, a local bike shop and camping/backpacking/canoeing outfitter managed by our friend Pathfinder Dave. If Josh stays at K-State, he could continue working there next year too, but he is set on going to school in the East next year, probably in Virginia.
I've mentioned in the past that I share Anna Quindlen's hope for her children: I hope mine might grow up to be the kind of people whose idea of redecorating is to buy more bookshelves. All the boys are readers, but neither Josh nor Owen was quite so avid as early as Taylor is. Last night, I heard Taylor laughing aloud. When I went to see what had set him off, I found him supine on a sofa. While browsing cartoons in back issues of the New Yorker, he had discovered the bloopers, the fillers the New Yorker uses to extend the short columns that might appear at the end of an article. That's the last time he gets away with telling me he's just looking at the pictures.
Today he spent the morning preparing for a classmate's afternoon birthday party by filling a cooler with water balloons. Margaret's invitation asked prospective attendees to BYOWB � bring your own water balloon. A new photo in the May album illustrates his handiwork.
I continue to plod along like a plow horse in this very busy school cycle, but the barn is just at the end of this row. Only two more weeks remain in the cycle. In spare moments, Walker Percy's essays in The Message in the Bottle continue to dazzle, but Percy's work is so rich that I'm going to take a break from them tonight. I'll reread Michael Palin's novel, Hemingway's Chair, instead.
[Note: On Wednesday, Yahoo! corrected the email problem mentioned in the previous log entry.]
7:30 PM CDT (GMT -5)
Tuesday, May 8, 2001
Free stuff should work right all the time, but it doesn't. I have been unable to access the mail associated with the GeoCities address ([email protected]) for the last two days, leaving the .5 letters/month that I receive here unread (Hi, Mom!) I have faith that Yahoo! will take care of this forthwith, but in the meantime, I also receive mail at [email protected]
6:45 AM CDT (GMT -5)
Monday, May 7, 2001
This morning at the pumps: $1.699 for a gallon of 87-octane unleaded and no damn S&H green stamps. No yellow TV (Top Value?) stamps either.
7:40 PM CDT (GMT -5)
My presumption that I have something to say is questionable under the best of circumstances; that presumption is clearly wrong when work has exhausted me.
I can attribute my nightly exhaustion directly to my current course load and to the energy that I'm expending at school. The classes have gone wonderfully � better for both me and the students than they do when the load is less, I think � probably because I must be better organized just to survive this cycle.
I arrive home just before Taylor goes to bed, and right around the time that Owen gets around to his intermediate algebra, a body of knowledge that I am now convinced would be more effectively taught before puberty begins pouring those horrible/wonderful chemicals into a kid's body. After a little y=mx+b action, I shuffle off to bed, watch the scribbles on a page of an Edward Abbey or Walker Percy essay do-si-do around a paragraph, and then I fall asleep.
I feel good and the classes go well, and the intensity of the work day produces a nearly euphoric exhaustion in me. I am ready, however, for some balance to the day. I need time for some figurative fingerpainting and clay, for another part of the brain to have a chance to play. In three weeks, the work schedule will relent. I can't wait.
In the meantime, Owen and his buds styled for the eighth grade prom tonight. I caught it in the first snapshot in the May album.
11:30 PM CDT (GMT -5)
Tuesday, May 1, 2001
The numbing busy-ness of life has filled the last few days: grading, yard work, housework, repeat. Life hasn't been unpleasant; it has, however, been filled with the routines of repetitive and unmemorable tasks.
A trip to a book store Friday night stands out. When I picked up a copy of Abbey's Desert Solitaire, a collection of essays by Walker Percy caught my eye, so I browsed and bought Percy's The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to do with the Other, an excursion into the slough of semiotics where meaning's meaning means nothing. Or not. Depends.
I liked the whimsy of the title to the first essay in the collection: "The Delta Factor: How I Discovered the Delta Factor Sitting at My Desk One Summer Day in Louisiana in the 1950's Thinking about an Event in the Life of Helen Keller on Another Summer Day in Alabama in 1887". I also liked the ambiguity of that title's participles, particularly in a collection dealing with the vagaries of signs and symbols.
6:15 AM CDT (GMT -5)
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