Sam faces a serious problem. He loathes snow, cold and wet. Thus he choses to avoid lakes, rain, baths - oh yes, and snowstorms.
On the other paw, there's eight inches of snow on the ground, so pretty hard to avoid when nature calls. He even slid out on a patch of ice, a thoroughly undignified moment for a serious dog.
Yesterday nearly every yard we walked by had children and grown ups playing in the snow. A few brave souls had shovels out, but it did seem rather like a waste of time, given how quickly the cleared areas filled up again.
I woke up around 2 AM from a series of dreadful nightmares with a dozen good ideas for the diss, half the introduction and half for detail chapters. I'm trying to push the literature as much as possible, without getting into the excruciating detail that drives me mad. I repeated the list a few times so that I wouldn't forget any of them - and then, of course, couldn't get back to sleep. (yawns) Please pass the coffee.
Now comes the challenge of integrating the ideas, most of which actually seem pretty good in broad daylight, into what's already present. You know what this means? Right: more books on the floor.
Words Written: lots of little scraps of paper
Lessons Graded: twelve
10 comments:
I had an almost identical night. Result? New books on desk: 8; Books on floor next to desk: 7.
Our mutt runs throughthe deep snow like crazy for about two minutes, then does her duty and whines at the door for entrance back inside.
My dog used to walk on the snow like it was burning coals. I always felt sorry for him. I wanted to buy him little booties, but I did not want to ruin his dignity.
Hope you got a snow day!
(I'm a different "Rob" from above, btw)
Even though Chester is from Virginia, he LOVES the snow. Hoodathunkit? It's particularly amusing when the snow is taller than his short legs...he has to hop, kind of like a rabbit, and he has the ears to match.
Hope Sam can carve a path for himself.
Back when I was just a little engineer, my family included a male dachshund. When he went out into snow of more than a couple inches' depth, the trail that he left inspired pity and terror in me. Two parallel files of paw prints, staggered, and in between: yes, a small furrow plowed in the frozen white stuff. Truly, his was the life of a dog, at least in winter.
I want to see snow. We don't ever get it. Whenver there's a snow flurry in the forcast, people where I live cancel school and raid the grocery stores.
By the way, nice to meet ya.
Harold Bloom, the intrepid literary critic from Yale, says there are four ages in the Canon of Western Literature.
Chronologically, he defines them as the Theocratic Age, the Aristocratic Age, the Democratic Age, and the Chaotic Age.
There is little doubt we are in the Chaotic Age.
But that begs the question...
What would be the Fifth Age? What comes next?
My proposal is to call the Fifth Age the Cybernetic Age, the Systematic Age, or the Autopoetic Age.
There isn't a whole lot of literature in the Cybernetic genre. Stanislaw Lem offers The Cyberiad. Neal Stephenson, Phillip K. Dick, and William Gibson have led the way, too.
What do you think, Lemming?
Is the Fifth Age of Literature something along those lines?
M - I think you need to include the pulp fiction genres of romance and true-life crime. The average American is more likely to read those than, say, Bernard Bailyn or Robin Kelley.
Bearing in mind that there's a film by that name, I think I'd have to argue for a "pop lit" era.
Crime and Romance belong to the Chaotic Age.
Criminals and lovers are equally fickle and unpredictable characters.
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