|
|
|
dog day at the secret spot
Monday, July 11 2005
Gretchen began teaching a one credit "library science" course at SUNY-Ulster today and it went so well that she's actually looking forward teaching it again tomorrow. For their part, the students are responding to the class in a way that suggests that they're surprised by how interested they are in the subject matter. This just goes to prove something about education and the way the human mind gauges what is of interest: a good teacher can make any subject fascinating. It's not really the subject that matters; it's the charisma of the professor. Classes shouldn't really even be advertised for what is to be taught but for the teacher who will be doing that teaching.
"It's gonna be a scorcher!" I'd promised as Gretchen was heading off to class, and in time the weather proved me right. In an effort to cheat the heat, I met her after class with the dogs at "the secret spot" on the Esopus just upstream from the Hurley Mountain Road bridge. Someone had come in with a bulldozer since we'd been there last and fixed all the flood damage to the parking area, something we'd never thought would happen. The water was low and warm, though springs along the northwest bank trickled a layer of refrigerated water into the deepest depths in the part of the channel that is deeper than any human is tall. As if knowing what a complete trip to the secret spot should entail, both dogs swam back and forth across the creek once and then ran around like nutcases, trampling wet sand across our picnic blanket multiple times.
Gretchen and I have been watching the final season of Six Feet Under and I've been enjoying it more than last year's season. I think this one is more psychologically complicated and nuanced, the dialogue more realistic, and the characters somehow even less black and white than before. Even somebody as briefly depicted as Vanessa's Au Pair is on the one hand a vapid Survivor hopeful and someone who brings in homeless people to make them pancakes (while referring to them with deferential formality).
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?050711 feedback
previous | next |
