1. I'm very happy to be retired, but sometimes I daydream about conducting a session of instruction in a classroom. Most often, these daydreams center around a dream reunion, a gathering of former students and I getting together. In my daydreams, we explore in the present, having all aged, what the questions we explored together years ago look like to us now. How do we understand suffering all these years later? What are our thoughts, now, about the nature of human nature? Is there such a thing? What do we think it means, now, to live a well-lived life? Is there such a thing? How have our understandings of happiness changed? Do those eternal questions of philosophy arise? What is the nature of reality? How do we know what we think we know? How do we determine right action? What is the nature of conscience? What is the nature of goodness? Or, I imagine myself asking these former students, without judgment, did this philosophical inquiry stop when the philosophy, writing, and literature courses ended? What in life endure? What is temporary? Did my students persist in exploring these questions they read about, wrote about, and discussed in the courses I used to teach?
These are fun day dreams. I know they'll never materialize, but today a bit of those daydreams materialized in a package from Amazon that arrived on my porch. As I opened it, I was racking my brain trying to remember having even made an Amazon order. It was a book. Then I knew. It was from Val.
Val was in an undergraduate seminar I taught in British Renaissance literature in the spring of 1983 at Whitworth. We've kept in touch, especially over the last dozen years or so, as members of a private Facebook group and as fortnightly participants in Sunday afternoon Zoom conversations.
Val is applying for admission in graduate programs in history. She's asked me to read her research essay that will accompany her application and to be an academic reference.
The research paper she'll submit is anchored in John M. Barry's book, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America. That's the book that arrived today. To prepare to read Val's paper, I will read this book.
So, I'm going to take a break from reading about whales and fireflies, but will be learning about events of 1927 that historically parallel what Sarah M. Broom wrote about Hurricane Katrina in The Yellow House. Barry's book will be much more comprehensive. It won't be a personal history like The Yellow House. But I am expecting that some significant threads of continuity, many of them infuriating, will be clear to see as I read about the flood of 1927 and reflect upon the Hurricane Katrina.
I've downloaded an audio version of the book being read and I'll read and listen at the same time.
I'll also get to to do what I enjoyed the most about being an instructor. I'll get to be of help.
2. A lifelong friend and native of Wardner, Idaho called me today, wondering if I knew what the Wardner High school colors were. I replied that I didn't know there ever was a Wardner High School, but my friend has reason to believe there was such a school long ago. Well, I have no documentation on hand that would answer whether Wardner ever had its own high school, so just because I don't remember Dad or Grandma or any other Wardner resident, past or present, mentioning one, I can't say for certain one way or the other.
I'd be very interested if any one has documents that establish with certainty that at one time Wardner had a high school or whether Wardner youth always attended high school in Kellogg. (I think I know that at one time Kellogg's high school was named, Kellogg-Wardner High School. Is that correct?)
3. I decided this evening to go beyond the sea and, rather than plunge back into the world of cephalopods, I'd watch episodes of Classic Albums, the turn of the century series that played on VH1.
I looked over what episodes are available on Amazon Prime and decided to learn more about Elton John's double album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I bought this album about forty years ago and mostly I enjoyed the sound of Elton John's voice and of his piano playing. I paid the most attention, I'd say, to "Candle in the Wind" and I enjoyed referring to anyone with the last name "Benson" or "Bennett" as "Bennie and the Jets". I also enjoyed the length and arc and epic feel of "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding". I hadn't, however, thought much or known much about how Bernie Taupin and Elton John worked together, how Bernie Taupin approached songwriting, or how this album came to be regarded as a concept album -- some called it Elton John's "Sergeant Pepper" or "Pet Sounds". I enjoyed learning all of this as I watched this documentary and enjoyed having my already high regard for Elton John expanded.
I poured myself a little more cognac and watched another episode of Classic Albums, this one focused on Cream's Disraeli Gears.
Almost immediately, my mind traveled back to just before The Plague intensified last March. My last overnight out of town outing began on March 4th when I went to the Bing Crosby Theater and reveled in a show called, "The Music of Cream" performed by a Cream tribute band which included Ginger Baker's son, Kofi, and Eric Clapton's nephew, Will Johns. For the first half of the show, the band played the album Disraeli Gears, track for track, and played a greatest hits set after intermission.
The concert electrified me (as did the Black Jacket Orchestra playing Dark Side of the Moon and then other Pink Floyd hits the next night).
But, equally as enjoyable as having Cream's music bring up great memories, was this documentary's exploration of Cream's formation, the debt they owe to decades old blues music, the variety of their music, their experiments, and how Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker were so seeped in classical music, jazz, and the blues and how this immersion informed Cream's music.
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