a day becomes pretty good once a big job is done. i just finished the last of the junior research papers. i took a minute to jump and howl, scare the cat, eat a jelly bean - but shouldn't let this celebration get out of hand. there is other work to do. tally all the grades, add the insightful comments, put it all into the marvelous grading machine. and, alas, alert those who have failed. yes, some have.

this will take time. i can't do most of it right now, so i am typing here to tell you. and i'm listening to an old elliott smith disc. nice melodies. and....

no, i'm not going to talk about the irish.

i don't know what they are or who they are, though i have met a few. i don't care that my last name's murphy. i don't care that i'm partial to a glass of guiness now and then. i don't care that at least half of my dna binds me to the emerald isle. i don't care that i stumbled onto chicago's trinity dancers on pbs the other night and was enchanted. i do not like riverdance and that other guy. i like the pogues. i will listen to them next. my old pal fr. emmet died a month after his last trip to the old sod. i've begun a book by john mcgahern, touted by his blurbs as the best of living irish writers, and this reminds me of emmet's stories of the old place. it also reminds me of wendell berry. surprise. i like heaney and boland and doyle and muldoon. i like joyce and beckett, yeats, wilde and swift. and all them high-toned irish folks. i like bono but don't think much of bob geldof. the undertones are still ok by me...and so is sinead, mad lady. and i'm wishing mike cullen the best wherever he may be.

(and all the saints in heaven don't you just hate it when the cat pukes right in the middle of yr most profoundly inspired thoughts and you have to jump up to clean it. i just hate when that happens. maybe if i was a real irishman i'd just let it lie there.)

anyhow.... americans are weird about ireland. if you want to read some really green thoughts for the day jig on over to erin's place. she got the proper spirit.

When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

James Joyce