JOURNAL: September 10, 2006

Yesterday was a great day for me. (I usually advise my students to avoid using the over-worked “great” in their writing, but I’m going to ignore that advice here. The day was indeed "great".) As I usually do on Saturday during the school year, I worked in my classroom for a few hours in the morning, putting things in order for the coming week of classes. I love that time each week. It’s my “hobby time” – the hours I spend each Saturday morning in my “workshop”, polishing my plans, pondering new ways to teach, tidying up the room, laying my plans to make next week a little better than last week. While countless other men and women are involved in their own leisure pursuits on Saturday morning, I’m pursuing my special type of ease and relaxation. On the weekend, my little classroom seems as magnificent a place to be as a beach or a thoroughly equipped basement workshop. Later in the day, I experienced a different kind of magnificence. It involved nothing more than sitting in a comfortable chair in my living room, reading the poetry of Tennyson and watching Notre Dame demolish Penn State on the gridiron. It was a soft, late-summer day, the perfect kind for doing nothing more than reading beautiful poems (“The Brook” is exceptional) and watching young men collide on green grass. It was an outstanding time in a great day: my team won, and the poems I read were first-rate.