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My class hours have been dropping like flies and now I have none. All the students are too busy preparing for the AP math and science tests. Seriously, I don’t have to set foot in the office until May 20th to give some final exams. It’s a relief, too, more because I don’t like my colleagues than because of the students. So I’ve been planning a more ( Read more... ) -
Circling Dixie
I downloaded “Circling Dixies: Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens” by Helen Taylor, into my kindle, and at first it wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know, but with a British amusement that Americans think 19th Century buildings are old, but then suddenly she hits me upside the head with the demographic that at the time of ( Read more... ) -
The Winter Soldier
I saw “The Winter Soldier” yesterday and it blew my mind. I don’t think I’ve been thrown that many curve balls in a single movie in my life. It took the spy genre and doubled down. Even their car chase scenes made more sense than in most action movies. I’m really looking forward to getting back to the States and seeing what this movie did to the ( Read more... ) -
…slippery notions serve our dishonesty. - Sartre
What is God? What is love? What is national security ( Read more... ) -
To a Child Dancing in the Wind
By W. B. Yeats ( Read more... ) -
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“The Gross National Product does not include the beauty of our poetry or the intelligence of our public debate. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile ( Read more... ) -
Riffing off “Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin
“I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.” - JB ( Read more... ) -
From “What is Literature?” by Sartre
“Let us bear in mind that the man who reads strips himself in some way of his empirical personality and escapes from his resentments, his fears, and his lusts in order to put himself at the peak of his freedom. This freedom takes the literary work and, through it, mankind, for absolute ends. It sets itself up as an unconditioned exigence in ( Read more... ) -
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I almost wasted a lot of unnecessary time at the bank. I had all my paperwork ready, then took a number, but there were ten numbers ahead of me, so I started reading a book, glancing up from time to time to keep track. Since the numbers are called out in Chinese, I have to keep my eye on the numbers over the counters. My number was 14, but 12 and ( Read more... ) -
I had a dream...,
Last night I had this dream in which the school where I work in China had to take a bus somewhere else for their lessons that day, but apparently my directions to the bus were imprecise so I was the last to arrive, and no one would move to give me room, so I had so shove myself in. As we drove along an elevated highway, we couldn’t see the ground ( Read more... )