at last, a weekend without junior research papers dangling overhead. not that they are done. this is just a respite, a breather. final drafts are due a week from today. but it's nice to live in this illusion of free space - only an illusion because i have more than enough back paperwork from other classes. scratch on my tombstone "he tried to keep up with it all." the world sets the pace after all, don't it?

they say we'll be snowed in tonight and tomorrow. that would be ok; i've got nowhere to go, but it hasn't started falling yet. out my window we've got that dark streetlit old snow from backaways. it's cold and lonely out there. stupid fire hydrant, fat old evergreen, beatup old driveway. wretched trees. funny how when the snow falls it doesn't seem so cold or lonely or old. it gets happy. even on the first day of march when true hearts are calling for spring things like baseball and poetry.

and now it's snowing.

so how was your week? oh. i forgot. this is my show. i get to say. but the whole week was school school and school...with just the tiniest sidetrip yesterday to get some blood sucked to check the liver function.

so school. regular sophomores finished reading a string of short stories...from beirce's "occurrence at owl creek bridge" to late faulkner's "race at morning." we're going to play with them a bit next week. honors sophs are grinding away at spoon river anthology. they seem not so awed by it. today i introduced the poem-writing project - again, they are doubtful. juniors are... oh research, yes, but we just dumped the romantics and now plunge into the victorians with dickens' "the signalman" - a cool enough ghost story. but there's still more poetry in this section than there is prose... and we (they) are aweary of it. i don't think this particular group is especialy well-served by such huge portions of old british lit. every day, it seems, i teach them more and more about just how irrelevant literature is to their lives. seniors have rumbled through "the cherry orchard" and "death of a salesman". we begin "waiting for godot" on monday or tuesday. i've asked them to think of these plays as an unusual trilogy, wondering what they can make of that.

i've asked for a reduced class prep load for next year. my experience with these four this year has taught me that i can do it, but i can't do it well. day after day, little things cannot be done, and in the long run big things suffer.

aside from the classes, death comes to two parents of faculty members. another's sister discovers her tumor is benign. another returns from successful surgery.

mr. fitz's campaign to raise funds for a native american school appears to be a smashing success - if his coffee can overflowing with bills and weighted by coin is any measure.

a couple juniors say they want to visit me on sunday morning to discuss their papers. fine. just fine.

so it's all school. all the time. this is your twenty-four hour a day school station. do i have a family? do i have friends? do i have interests and a life beyond the classroom? it has been rumored. but i wouldn't believe it if i were you.

A man at work, making something which he feels wll exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men, and our days will be happy and eventful.

William Morris