I Voted.

I voted early today, since I could do it on campus after class. The line was a block long, all students as far as I could tell. That's a good sign, huh? Next Tuesday, we caucus. We get two votes in Texas primaries. (Even the votes are bigger in Texas.)

Wednesday night I went to a review session for my geology exam (I have three exams next week -- I feel like all I'm doing this semester is taking exams, and I'm not loving it) and afterwards I strolled over to the south mall where I thought I might catch the end of a Hillary rally where Bill Clinton was speaking. It was 6:40 and the thing was supposed to start at 5:30, but he was being introduced as I walked up. The crowd was small, I think, at least much smaller than I would have expected for such an event. There was a core of screaming kids near the stage, but most of the crowd was hanging back with their arms folded, obviously not there to rally for Hillary but to see what old Bill had to say.

The president of the student Democrats gave him a very strange introduction: "We know him from MTV! We know him from playing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall! He's the first rock star president this country has ever had!" My guess is that most of the audience, the speaker included, was about 2 years old in 1991. I doubt they even know who Arsenio Hall is.

Anyway, his speech wasn't particularly interesting. ("I love my wife. But even if she wasn't my wife and she asked me to stand up here and endorse her, I would do it. Because she's more qualified to be president than anyone I've ever known." What an idiotic thing to say. If she weren't your wife, she wouldn't be running for president. If she weren't your wife, nobody would even know who she is. And she is your wife, so how do you know how you'd feel about her if she weren't?)

I stayed for about 20 minutes and then went home. One thing struck me. Not really a new thought, but a clear example of why I don't like Bill or Hillary Clinton. He was talking about how one of the points that is brought up to argue against Hillary as president is that, because of who she is, she would stir up the Clintons vs. the Republicans fighting of the 90s. And Bill said (I'm paraphrasing), "I don't know about you, but I thought the nineties were pretty good. I don't know what's wrong with fighting. I'd like to see someone in the White House who's willing to fight. Fight for jobs, fight for prosperity," etc. Now, everybody knows that's not exactly the fighting Hillary's detractors are referring to. Sure, there was a lot of squabbling over real issues, over legislation, but the fighting that we're talking about is the personal, partisan bickering that colored every issue. Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky. Instead of either ignoring or addressing the real objection, he distorts its meaning and then responds to that because it supports his stance. All with a wide-eyed innocent expression. I guess you'd call it passive-aggressive behavior. It's insulting.

Maybe she learned it from him, but it's their favorite rhetorical tactic. It's not exactly lying -- though they do plenty of that as well -- but it's false.

J and I went to a neighborhood block party for Obama tonight. Free pizza. Kids. White people and black people, together. It felt like the future.

La Tarea.

Here's a treat for my Spanish-speaking readers. La tarea de esta mañana:

El verano pasado, mi sobrino (el segundo hijo varón de mi hermana y su esposo) estuvo muy enfermo. Se contagió de E. coli. Primero, el tuvo un dolor de estómago. Por supuesto, con frecuencia los niños se enferman, así que mi hermana y mi cuñado no creían que era grave, pero un dia comenzó a sangrar. En ese momento, supieron que era grave. El pasó trés meses en el hospital. Sus padres pasaron todos los dias con él, y mis otros parientes lo visitaron frecuentemente. Yo no pude ir, pero mi hermano mayor (el otro tío de mi sobrino) podía visitar porque vive más cerca. Muchas veces, mi sobrino casi murió. Sin embargo, mi familia y yo nunca perdimos la esperanza. Finalmente recuperó y fue a casa.

(The assignment was to write 100 words about an important incident in my life. My friend Z, who, in addition to having vast knowledge of botany and horticulture and various other life sciences, speaks fluent Spanish, helped me with this.)

Double Life.

I arrived in New York for the reading in the nick of time. Actually I was a bit early -- my flight left on time, arrived early, there was no one in the taxi queue, and eerily no traffic on the BQE to Manhattan from Queens. We rehearsed for a little over 2 hours, which, even if you have nothing to compare it to, I'm sure it's fairly obvious isn't a lot of time, but all the actors were quick and focused and did a great job. It was rough, but we expected that. The reading itself was in a rehearsal space in Chelsea that I knew immediately I'd been in before, back in my rock and roll days, one of those big stinky band practice buildings divided up into dozens of little rooms that are never soundproof enough.

Afterwards T and I went to a bar nearby for drinks with the producers. We were happily all of one mind regarding what needs work: mainly two narrative holes, one in the first act and one in the second act. They're problems T and I knew were there, and we were waiting for the reading to see it from a wider angle. The producers are going to fly me to New York again in two weeks (my spring break) so that T and I can do some more writing together.

That evening and the next morning after the reading, feeling inspired, T and I hashed out some ideas. We're writing a new song for the second act, for the trial, which contains the climax of the story. I came home and -- instead of doing Spanish homework -- threw together a rough draft in GarageBand and sent it to T on Monday night.

Okay, now back to Spanish (and Geology and History...) for two weeks.

Whether Weather.

I woke up this morning to an email from JetBlue letting me know that my flight to New York had been canceled because of snow there, which was disorienting because it's been quite summery here. My first impulse was to check Amtrak, but the earliest I could get to New York by train would be Monday night, because I'd have to go all the way up to Chicago and then on to New York. Though I love the idea of a 4-day train ride, I have to be in New York by early tomorrow afternoon, so that wasn't going to help.

I talked to T on the phone, but there didn't seem to be much we could do, so I went to school and felt more and more resigned as the morning went by that I wouldn't be going to New York this weekend for the Lizzie Borden reading.

When I got home from classes, T had emailed suggesting I try to fly to Philly or Baltimore or DC tonight or tomorrow morning and take a train. First I called JetBlue to see if they had a flight in the morning. They didn't. But while T and I were looking for flights to other East Coast cities, a single seat opened up on a JetBlue flight tomorrow morning at 7:30, so the agent snagged it for me and I'm back on for New York, barring any further natural calamities.

Honeymoon's Over.

I don't know, I may have spoken too soon about how great all my teachers are this semester.

I had my first geology exam last Friday. It's a basic geology for non-majors class. The professor is a little odd, but I usually like odd people. The material right away seemed pretty advanced, but I felt confident after getting an A in Biology of AIDS last semester, which, if you don't remember, was very hard.

I have a heavy course load this semester, and I've been a little overwhelmed with the amount of reading, but I studied, I thought, adequately for the exam. There were a few questions that totally stumped me, but I thought I did well.

Except that there were three questions that I didn't like at all. One asked for information that we were specifically asked not to worry about memorizing. (We were to remember the Eons, Periods, and Ages, but not the Epochs. The answer to one of the questions was one of the Epochs. Fair?) Another asked for the age of the universe. The correct answer, on the test, was 13-14 byo. Our textbook says 15. Okay, maybe there's a little play in the age of the universe.

But this is the one I can't let slide. The question was, "The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter represents ______. (a) a disintegrated terrestrial planet, (b) a disintegrated gaseous planet, (c) remnants of a large comet that orbited the Sun, (d) fragments that never aggregated into a planet. The textbook for the class very clearly supports "d." The answer he wanted for the test was "a." I looked this up in several sources and all of them point to "d." Some of them say that the disintegrated planet theory used to be what scientists believed but that now the consensus is that the asteroids were never a planet. (I chose "d" on the test and got it wrong.) Here's a little math: I got an 86 on the test. There were 50 questions, so, without the three fucked-up questions, I would have gotten a 92. Which is an A. Which is better than a B.

I emailed the professor, because I thought it must be a mistake in the exam key or something and he would want to know. He emailed back and said that the asteroids contained mantle and crust material which proves they were melted at some point, so they must have been a planet. He also said, "You should chuck your source." I wrote back and said that my source was the textbook for the course (which I'd already told him, and quoted in my email) and that all the websites he'd referred us to for information on the solar system also contradicted his answer.

That was two days ago and he hasn't responded. I don't know what to do at this point. I'm not going to let it go. I don't want to be a dick, but I want to know what's up. Either the test is wrong and needs to be fixed, or I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, he's the teacher and he should explain it to me. I didn't let lazy teachers off the hook when I was 7 years old; I'm sure as hell not going to do it now.

Thank God for Claritin D, Thank God for Texas.

Cedar Fever came back stronger than ever yesterday. It's hard to even describe how unpleasant it is, it's like a little worm boring through your sinuses. A friend recommended Claritin D, and I decided he was probably to be trusted on this because he's, as J said, not someone who likes to suffer.

On Fridays I have Geology lab at 9:30, Geology lecture at 11, and then I'm done. We had an exam today. I studied, but not as much as I like. I feel a little stressed about all my classes this semester, I'm just barely keeping up with the reading there's so much. I like to stay a little ahead or I get nervous. But the Geology material was pretty straightforward (except for the stuff that wasn't), so I felt okay about the test. It's always uncomfortable on test day because everybody is there and every seat is filled. The lighting is poor, and the little swinging desk things are usually all right-handed. On top of that my nose was running like a spigot.

Except for two questions, the exam was not too hard. I have a bone to pick with the professor about those two questions. One included material that we were specifically told not to memorize. And on the other one, about the age of the universe, none of the available answers corresponded to the figures in the textbook (figures which I did memorize).

After the text, I went to the university pharmacy for the Claritin D and hydrogen peroxide for my breath. We get a good deal at the university pharmacy. I felt like crap when I got home. I've barely slept the last two night because my nose is running. I took a Claritin D, and the decongestant kicked in about an hour later. The antihistamine didn't do much, but I didn't expect it to. Nothing can touch the devil pollen. But if my nose is going to be running constantly, I appreciate being able to breath through it. (The D stands for decongestant (pseudophedrine), so maybe I should just take generic pseudophedrine, since the antihistamine doesn't work -- hm.)

At 2, I had a conference call with T (my Lizzie Borden collaborator) and the lawyer who is negotiating our option deal. That went well. We're close to finalizing that, which is good because we're doing a first reading in two weeks.

Then, I had an appointment at the MAP Eligibility Office, to find out if I qualify for a health care program for low income people. The program is funded by the Travis County Hospital District, which I'm thinking is a sort of a pseudo-governmental entity along the lines of a water district or the Tennessee Valley Authority or one of those things. Anyway, I qualify and I'm enrolled! I get $10 doctor visits, $7-10 prescriptions, $25 emergency room visits, and there's also a dental clinic, which is what got me to apply in the first place. I can't wait till Monday morning when I can call and make an appointment to see a dentist!

It was about 85 degrees and dry and sunny today. Kind of surreal.

One Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus.

I know how you feel.

Vote.

I was going to send an email to everyone I know in all the states holding primaries today and ask them to think about voting for Barack Obama, but I decided that might annoy some people. I'm not necessarily concerned about annoying friends with a directive to vote -- I'm always telling people they should vote -- but it occurred to me that their annoyance might cause them to vote against Obama!

So I'll just say this: if you live in one of the states holding a primary today, please don't forget to vote.

Mushroom Barley Soup.

J and I had a couple friends for dinner last night. I made mushroom barley soup, which I've made before but last night's was so good that I feel compelled to write down the recipe and share it. I don't usually remember recipes so exactly, but I paid attention last night. It's really simple; the flavor depends as much on method as ingredients. Toasting the barley and browning the mushrooms are key.

Mushroom Barley Soup

4 or 5 crimini mushrooms, sliced
4 or 5 shitake mushrooms, sliced
about a dozen white mushrooms, sliced
(Don't wash the mushrooms, just brush the dirt off before you slice them.)
2 cloves garlic, pressed
2 small onions, diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
1 medium-sized carrot, peeled and diced
7 cups mock chicken stock
rounded 1/2 cup barley
2 or 3 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
salt and pepper
olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
cornstarch

Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet and add the butter and barley. Stir constantly over medium heat until the barley begins to change color. Put the barley aside, splash a little olive oil in the pan, and add the mushrooms, garlic, a few pinches of salt and pepper. Saute, stirring, until the liquid is released, then evaporated, and the mushrooms start to brown a little. (You don't want them to burn, but you want some browned bits to stick to the bottom a little -- that's where the flavor comes from.) Add a little water to the pan, scrape the browned bits off the bottom and turn off the heat.

Heat up a big heavy stockpot, add a little olive oil and salt and the onions, celery, and carrots. Saute over medium heat until the onions and celery wilt. Add the stock, mushrooms, bay leaves and paprika and the toasted barley. Bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer for about 45 minutes until the barley "pops."

Stir about 2 tablespoons cornstarch into a half cup of cold water, and add it to the soup. Simmer for another few minutes until the broth thickens slightly. Salt and pepper to taste.

This soup reminded me of the Kiev restaurant on 2nd Avenue and 7th St. in the East Village, where I ate frequently back in the 80s. I think it's still there, but it's renovated and unrecognizable now. They used to make a very similar mushroom barley soup. They made theirs with chicken stock, and they served it with two very thick slices of challah bread with butter. It was very filling and all you'd need for dinner for $2.50. $3 with coffee. My other favorite meal there was kielbasa and eggs, which was just sliced kielbasa fried on the griddle with 2 scrambled eggs, served with home fries and challah bread, also under $3.

Something Different.

I want something different. The only sexual intimacy in my life these days is occasional drunk encounters with near-strangers. I don't want to say that there's anything necessarily wrong with those encounters -- and I'm not unaware of the possibility that my refusal to judge is indeed the problem -- but I want something different.

Lately I have framed this question (of how intimacy figures in my life) as part of my larger inquiry into what it is to be an artist, what an artist does, what kind of a life is ideal, or productive, or available to an artist, what kind of a domestic life an artist needs in order to work, etc. One of the answers I came up with not long ago is that I am more at ease with the management of my life if I explicitly prioritize the work over relationships. (I do this anyway, but to do it openly reduces my anxiety about what I should be doing.) I decided I didn't have any use for a boyfriend or whatever you call it.

So, theoretically, casual sex works. And in some ways it works on a practical level too. I am having fun, is what I mean. But there are too many pitfalls, and I'm kind of thinking lately that it's not worth the risks.

There's emotional risk. I had this idea that it isn't the length or seriousness of the encounter, or how well I know the guy, that is important, but rather my attitude or intention. Meaning that I want sex to be a way to express affection for another human being, rather than a means of feeling better about myself for a few minutes. So I've worked at that, with some success. I don't always get it right.

And there is the health risk. Or I should say, the whole host of health risks. With partners whom I don't care about beyond that moment it's much more difficult to 1) stick to boundaries regarding safety, i.e., what level of risk I'm comfortable with, or what I will and will not do, and 2) know what I'm getting into. (I know they say you should always conduct yourself as if your partner is HIV positive, and that's wise advice, but we all know that the better you know someone, the more likely you are to know something about his disease history, and there are lots of other diseases besides HIV, many of them much easier to catch. I find the whole risk thing to be less like a contract and more like an extemporaneous dance.)

So what is it I want?

There's a guy I see on the bus almost every day. He's tall and muscular with a wide smile and a crewcut. We're in a class together. He noticed me reading one of the books from that class one day last week on the bus, and he said something, we chatted for a few minutes. He probably plays football, is probably from a small town, probably goes to church every Sunday, he has that look. I find myself staring at his chest and thinking how nice it would be to just lay my head there. What is wrong with me?

The Draft.

We got the draft option agreement from the producers of Lizzie Borden last week. It's 11 pages long, and I'm a little shocked to find that I know what most of it means. I have some questions for the lawyers, but for the most part it looks close to what we expected, so I don't think there will have to be a lot of back and forth to get to a final version.

What's unexpected is that, after paying the attorney and covering expenses we incurred in revising and preparing the music and book, there's not much left of our advance. But we get royalties of course, so if the show is a hit we all get rich! Or something like that.

The name of the production company is Took An Axe Productions. This is very exciting!

Election.

Hillary Clinton is Tracy Flick.

Red Van, White Trailer.

I'm coming out of the fog I was in. Fog is not really the best image to convey it -- it felt more like having my head encased in a Plexiglas box for 3 weeks. But my sinuses are clear now. I can hear, I can smell, I can breathe through my nose!

On my walk to the bus every morning, I cut through the parking lot of a hotel (we live two blocks from I-35, so our sweet little neighborhood is bordered with a strip of chain hotels and restaurants). One day last week, parked in the lot behind the hotel there was a nondescript white trailer hitched to a maroon van. I saw it from a block away and my eyes widened, my throat thickened, and I could swear I heard a dark heavy chord played on an organ somewhere. Closer, I could see that the trailer wasn't a camper, but some sort of hybrid with a camper-style door on the side and double cargo doors on the back. And the van was more of a Suburban-type vehicle than a regular van. But the colors and proportions and the foggy morning light had created a ghost, and I felt sweetly sad for most of the morning.

The bright red object on top of the van in the picture (above) is a canoe -- click on the pic to make it bigger. Once, during a particularly messy patch in our year and a half on the road, when it felt like our heads and hearts were going to explode, we decided to separate for a week. J and I didn't have any gigs for a spell. I stayed in a campground with the trailer and Christopher Isherwood's My Guru and His Disciple, one of my favorite books. I can't remember where R went, J dropped him off somewhere. And J took the van. I also don't remember where J went for that week, but he came back with a canoe. He bought a pretty red canoe. We used it a few times but eventually decided that lugging it around was more trouble than it was worth.

I apologize to the folks who read my blog and aren't familiar with Y'all and Life in a Box and all the rest. I know my references to those things are cryptic, vague. It's just that my writing here is about the present, and that stuff is the past. Not that the two are ever really separate things, but you know what I mean. Now that I say that, I realize that a good percentage of my blog writing consists of remembered anecdotes, so I'm lying when I say that this is about the present. Okay, here's another excuse: Y'all and Life in a Box are too big, too wide, too deep to summarize here. Here's my favorite review of Life in a Box. I refer people to this review when I'm trying to get out of explaining the film myself. Scroll down to where it says: "My favorite film at this year's PTFF, however, was one that took me by complete surprise."

Teeth.

I love this movie! I don't know if it has been released everywhere yet. J and I saw it at an Austin Film Society pre-release screening last night. It's gorgeous and terrifying and hysterically funny. Jess Weixler is brilliant. Her performance is perfectly calibrated to make the whole thing work. It's just a perfect movie.

One Week In.

Some thoughts on my first week of classes:

My Intro to American Studies professor does this thing with his face -- purses his lips and cocks his head -- exactly like Pee Wee Herman. I noticed it right away but couldn't figure out what it was reminding me of, because, besides being skinny and sort of handsome in a pixie-ish way, he doesn't otherwise resemble Pee Wee, but he did it on Wednesday and suddenly I made the association and I stifled a laugh which came out as just a "huhn!" and a smile.

I've been very lucky in my choice of classes again, or maybe the caliber of faculty at U.T. is just that good. All my professors are good lecturers, engaging, smart, and funny.

I'm going to be reading like a fiend this semester. Besides two pretty dense textbooks for my Geology and History of Texas Government classes, I'll be reading about a dozen books and a stack of about 200 photocopied pages for my two American Studies classes.

I think Spanish will be, if not less challenging, less stressful this semester. The teacher is organized, somewhat strict, and very very patient.

I feel less connected or engaged or something than I did last semester, but I'm blaming it on the cedar fever. I can't for the life of me remember the names of my professors, except my Spanish teacher. I'm sort of in a fog because my nose is constantly running, I have a headache, and I can't breathe through my nose.

Here's What I Think.

The big issue many people have with Barack Obama is that he is unproven, that because his resume is so short there's too much we don't know or can't anticipate about him, that we could elect him and something horrible might happen that we never imagined. Or he could turn out to be another charming politician that we pin all our hopes on and he lets us down, turns out to be incompetent or dishonest. Like Jimmy Carter, like Bill Clinton.

Though I get exasperated with people who say he's all inspiration and no policy when all it takes is a Google search to find reams and reams of policy (try his campaign website for starters -- maybe this stuff is not on CNN, but it's not hard to find), even so, he is young, he is light on government experience. The benefit of the doubt is not something that it is usually wise to give to a politician. I get that.

I like to think that I like him, that I believe in him, because I've done the research, because I'm paying attention, because I'm smart, because I have superior intuition, but I don't discount the possibility that I like him because I have no choice.

I will not vote for Clinton or Edwards. They both voted to authorize the war against Iraq. It's as simple as that for me. They supported an immoral war. They claim they didn't know what they were doing when they cast their votes, that they had no idea Bush was lying. I knew Bush was lying. Millions of people protesting in the streets knew Bush was lying. So, not only did they fall on the wrong side of the question, they did it for cynical, political reasons and then lied about it. I can't vote for somebody who would lie on that scale, about something so big, so important. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Iraq.

Every once in a while I soften on Edwards, because he talks about poverty in a way that no one else will, and we need to have that discussion in order to solve so many of the problems we talk about all the time and can't figure out how to solve: bad health care, racism, obesity, drugs, poor education. But I would not vote for Hillary Clinton, not in a primary, not in a general election, not for president of the P.T.A. My memories of the nineties are too fresh: Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Defense of Marriage Act, NAFTA. I know she's not Bill Clinton, but he'll be right there beside her. They are billing themselves as a team. No thanks.

I'm willing to see if Obama really can change the way we govern ourselves. There's always a chance he'll flop. But I don't see that I have any other choice. If Clinton is the nominee, I will still vote. Voting is an obligation I take seriously. But I'll write somebody in.

Hints.

Yesterday in Spanish class, we were learning a group of verbs that have a similar irregular construction in Spanish (verbs that mean things like, "to like ____," or "to need to ____," or "to be annoyed by _____"). We played a game of bingo where each square contained a sentence and a blank for someone's name, and we had to fill in the name of someone in the class after asking around to see who fit with the sentences. Some of the sentences were "No le interesa ir de compras (He doesn't like to go shopping)", and "Le disgusta el chisme (He is disgusted by gossip)" and "Le conviene ir al dentista (He needs to go to the dentist").

That last one made me uncomfortable to begin with, even if it wasn't directed at me, but when one woman in class walked right up to me and asked "Te conviene ir al dentista?" it felt like a conspiracy.

People are always giving me breath mints. Isn't it obvious how unhelpful that is? First of all, it's tooth decay that's giving me bad breath, so I don't need to be sucking candy all day. Second, it doesn't help. Nasty breath is even nastier combined with the smell of mint. And third, it's annoyingly cryptic. If you want to let somebody know his breath is foul, tell him his breath is foul. And deal with his reaction, because, though it will be useful news, it won't be pleasant news. My reaction now would be "I know," but I imagine most people don't know because their loved ones are afraid to tell them. Bad breath can be a sign of any number of health problems, so do a good deed and tell somebody he has bad breath today.

He's Different.

It's 49 minutes long. When do you ever get to listen to a presidential candidate talk sensibly for 49 minutes about a range of issues? Ever? Watch the whole thing. It's worth it.

Halitosis.

For someone for whom social awkwardness is already a problem, a lifelong problem (or, more particularly -- I don't know if this is always the cause of social awkwardness, but it is in my case -- a neurotic fear of having no control over others' impressions of me) bad breath is the worst nightmare, the ultimate test. It's like walking through life with shit smeared on your face, maybe, probably, shit which is only perceptible to other people so you don't know how often it's there or how much, and there's no way for you ever to know.

Day One.

This is completely not what I'm going to write about in this post, but the title puts me in mind of what is probably the thing that bugs me most about Hillary Clinton: more than the fact that every time she says anything you can see how carefully formulated her answer is so that she can deny she said it later if she needs to, or the fact that she avoids the truth as if it were bird flu, even more than the fact that she's married to Bill Clinton, what bugs me more than anything about her is that she uses expressions like "day one." She's always talking about what she's going to do or what she's going to be ready to do on "day one." I hate that.

Today was my first day of classes. (What a nice word "first" is. It looks nice. It sounds nice.) I have a geology class for non-majors called "Earth, Wind, & Fire." It's everyday geology -- what you need to know about Earth to be a responsible citizen of the planet and fascinate people at parties. I like the professor. He's 60-ish, dry scientist/dad sense of humor.

Just before class started he stepped out from behind the lectern and walked across the front of the room and back. His very deliberate way of walking reminded me of a guy I used to work with who had some kind of nerve condition, and the thought came into my head that he had walked across the room just then to get it out of the way, so everyone could see that he had an odd walk and then he wouldn't be as self-conscious about it. Just as he got back behind the podium, a guy sitting next to me said to his friend sitting behind me, "He walks like he has a wedgie," and his friend said, "Yeah. He probably does."

I thought, "How insensitive and immature!" and had a whole conversation in my head, comparing myself to these guys, lamenting how unkind people can be, but eventually forgiving them because they're so young and I'm so old and worldly and of course I would have more compassion because I've seen more suffering, etc. Then it dawned on me how backwards I had it, that the little storyline I made up for the professor was condescending, that I was projecting my discomfort onto him, when in fact he was probably just walking across the room to survey the class, or stretch his legs, or for no reason at all. And he did in fact walk like he had a wedgie.

I think Spanish is going to be less traumatic this semester. The teacher is from Colombia and has lots of teaching experience. She was at ease in front of the class, and had us all speaking on the first day. Ahh. (I recognized her immediately as the voice of the audio portion of our final exam last semester. Obviously they chose her because she speaks so clearly and beautifully.)

And last today was Introduction to American Studies. The "introduction" is more to a way of approaching a subject than to a subject itself. The subject of the course is Texas history and culture, but we'll be using the methods used by American Studies scholars which, from what I understand so far, combine the critical and theoretical tools of English scholars with those of social scientists. We'll see what that's all about. The professor was impressive, engaging speaker, pointy shoes. I didn't know beforehand that it was Texas course, but it works out well because I have a Texas government class too this semester. By May I'll be a Texas expert. (And the Spanish helps too, since so much of Texas history is in Spanish.)