Three Beautiful Things 09/25/07: Focus, Focus, Sweet Pop

1. My new Canon Powershot a640 arrived today. I spent the afternoon working on school tasks and my evening class met tonight, so I haven't taken a chance to try this camera out. My afternoon is freer tomorrow, so I'll be able to start snapping around. Get ready Snug.

2. I'm energized by having decided to assign different books and to change the philosophical focus of my WR 121 course. We'll be exploring loss, survival, and reconciliation, reading "The Things They Carried", "Buffalo for the Broken Heart", and "The Souvenir". Our department has cut back on literature offerings and so my entire teaching schedule is three sections of this one course. I passionately look forward to being able to focus on this one course and to move deeply into these central human concerns of what we suffer, how we get through it, and what the different faces of reconciliation can be.

3. After my evening class I arrived home, popped a generous bowl of popcorn, lightly buttered and salted it, and sat down with a very cold bottle of Diet Pepsi. The caramel flavor of the Diet Pepsi sweetened the popcorn and suddenly it was 1964 and I was at Northtown in Spokane with Mom and my sisters and the smell of that old shop that sold caramel popcorn overwhelmed my memory circuits.