The semester seems to have ended its beginning of the school year rush--I haven't had anyone stop by my office for 2 hours! (I think since last Tuesday my longest stretch of being visitorless was about 20 minutes. This happens every Fall, but eventually, life returns to normal.)
And so, a series of seemingly unrelated (but, perhaps secretly related) observations:
1. Convocation last week was the usual bacchanalian revel. That event should really be called a Pep Rally and then we faculty can stop going to witness our students exhibiting levels of modesty and sobriety somewhat less than those constituting Civilized Norms.
2. The highlight of Convocation--our new President led off her speech with a lengthy discussion of...baseball! I am starting my 17th year here and this is the first sports reference I have heard in a college speech. Lynn (said New President) really likes baseball--her devotion to the Red Sox seem comparable to my devotion to the Raiders. She also indicated she would like to be Commissioner of Baseball (indeed, her internal college e-mail address is commish). I ran into her the next night at a different event and figured it would be worth discovering if she was qualified to be commissioner of baseball, so I asked where she stood on the DH. She is in favor if it. I expressed my disapproval. Let us hope that she exhibits better wisdom in the matter of running a college than on the matter of baseball.
3. Emma is off at another Beauty Contest for Horses (aka Dressage Show) this weekend. Lily and Clara are both home sick today. I am tempted to take Janet out to dinner tonight--I pity her being home all day with the two younger Offspring, but I suspect her maternal instincts will keep her from desiring to leave the house when said children are ill.
4. I am a bit behind in the book review department. Toward the end of the summer, I read a few books from authors with whom you know exactly what you will get when you start a book:
Wodehouse, Bachelors Anonymous
Gaiman, Stardust
Christie, Endless Night
They are listed in declining order of Goodness. The Wodehouse book is very late Wodehouse--his second to last novel if memory serves--he didn't lose a step at the end. The Gaiman book was fun. The Christie book was terribly problematic. I read it over two nights--I think it needed to be read in one night. The problem was a bit odd. It's a 180 page book. Nobody dies until page 130. I stopped the first night before page 130, but well into the book. Then my mind started roaming over the book. Here we have an Agatha Christie book--over halfway through, nobody has died. Obviously somebody will die at some point. So, if somebody is going to die, who is it and who did it? It wasn't hard to figure out when I thought about it. I think if I had read the book right through without pausing to wonder about the strange nature of a murder mystery in which the murder doesn't happen until very late in the book, it would have been a much better mystery. But, it is a little bit of a let down to read a murder mystery when you have solved the question of who will murder whom before said murder has even happened.
5. A new album review: I got a copy of Robert Plant's latest, Band of Joy. (Amazon Deal of the Day, naturally--I can't remember the last time I bought an album for regular price.) It's an album of covers. The lead song, Angel Dance can be heard here. That song is a cover of a Los Lobos tune. (The title of this post is another song from the album--it's an old gospel song.) The whole album is interesting--mellow--more like late Zeppelin than early Zeppelin. Plant is one of the few old Rock Heroes who has aged gracefully--he seems to get that a 60+ year old pretending he is 24 is really quite silly (yeah, I'm looking at you Mick and Keith and Roger and Pete). I think Janet will like this album too, but she hasn't heard it yet. I have no idea if the young'ins will approve.
6. Football Season started. Life is good.
7. The Raiders lost in week 1. Life isn't so good after all, I suppose. See the title of this blog post.
8. I had three visitors between the time I started writing this and now.
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There's a sweet film adaptation of Stardust that came out a few years ago. The book, I agree, is fun but doesn't blow the top of your head off, but the movie is actually kind of unique as it's so different from the sort of fantasy movies that tend to get made. I think it's fun for (most) of the family.
ReplyDeleteI'm not convinced by your words on Convocation, Hartley. I'm pretty sure you stared at your shoes as usual and don't have a clue how crazy the students were actually being -- ie, probably not that crazy. I remember being tipsy at mine, but not bacchanalian, and if anybody was naked they were hiding it under their robe. Anyway, I like what I hear about Lynn so far and I hope that continues.