Still under the weather, today’s good news is that it feels like any cough could be the big, final cough that signals the end of a cold, and my return to health, which means in June, I’ll finally shake the rattly thing.
It rained a lot today. Here, the soil sits over limestone, which does not play well with water. That means, that if more than three or four people on campus spit at one time in Spanker’s Branch* outside our building, it’s going to flood. And today, it rained a lot.
That flooded the creek, overwhelmed the nearby drainage, which happens a few times a year, and gets into the meadow and the bordering road. I have a view of this from my office. One of these people narrowly avoided being brought up on charges.
I’m slow walking Willie Morris’ North Toward Home, because I never like it when great books end. I am in the third act of this memoir now. He’s moved to New York, to become, at 31, the youngest editor ofHarper’s Magazine. It’s 1967 here, and he’s taking the temperature of the middle of the country.
The more things change … the more we find that things aren’t that much different at all, half a century later.
We just don’t enjoy 1960s branding. (Thank goodness.)
I wonder how much longer I can drag out this book. I know where it’s going, I just want to enjoy the process of the writing and Morris’ storytelling for … quite a lot longer, actually.
*Spanker’s Branch was an early name the little body of water on campus had. Then they named it after a former college president. That deceased man’s views on eugenics have lately led to the things named in his honor being renamed. These days, it is officially known as Campus River. Spanker’s Branch it is, then.
