1. I started reading my World Lit. students' essays looking at the way images of nature in ancient Chinese and Japanese poems portray, explore, bring to life, give us a clearer picture and understanding of human experience and emotion: the papers are astonishing me. They shouldn't. This has been a superb group of students. But, I love being astonished and the high quality of these papers is blowing me away.
2. If the world's problems seemed just a little more solved this afternoon, that's because Jeff, Michael, and Margaret and I had coffee today and if we weren't rehashing mental grad school highlight reels we were hashing out the mysteries of Bob Dylan and when we got him figured out we discussed moral philosophy in relation to the messiness of everyday life. That was my favorite thread of discussion. I know life is and always has been a mess. What's my moral response? I'm still working on that one....so are my coffee friends.
3. I hadn't had a chance to talk a lot with Kate for a while and we sat next to each other at our division holiday cold cut evening brunch at The Broadway and then she gave me a ride home and it was really fun listening to her take on literary theory, our workplace, movies, Dan O'Brien, and our shared experience teaching in the Fast Lane learning community.
I've got a lot to think about -- stimulating student papers, the insights of my coffee mates, and conversation with Kate....it'll be fun to let it all settle in...
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