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<\/center><\/p>\nTwo classes today, as has been this semester’s Thursday routine. Today was our last time together. Today we screened their final projects. <\/p>\n
I’d broken them up into groups, based on their own interests and dislikes in crew positions. Each group had to then create a two-minute public service announcement. They’ve had the opportunity to work on this for about a month. Some of them have used some of that time wisely. The pre-production part of the assignment demanded it. One group may have produced their entire video project yesterday. <\/p>\n
All of the projects had their strengths. Most were quite creative, one or two were perfectly straightforward. I enjoyed watching them all. My favorite part is talking about them after we screened each one. <\/p>\n
I asked the people not involved the project we watched to share some thoughts. It’s always a lot of fun to hear feedback from others, and gratifying to me to see them all reaching for something constructive and critical, but in a positive way. After almost four months of putting up with me, they’d bonded together in sympathy. Then I would ask the group members what they would do differently if they had to do it again. And then I would offer some observations. That can be as big or as little as you want it to be. <\/p>\n
And that was it. I gave them the last big speech of the semester, reminded them of basic school-type things they needed to hear and thanked them for the semester. “Bump into me around campus. Catch me up on what you’re doing. It’s up to you. Now get out of here and go make great things.” And they all left. <\/p>\n
The second class wrapped at about 6:30, and so I walked to the car in darkness, just before 7 p.m. There’s a peculiar feeling on a college campus on a night during finals. It’s lonely and sleepy, but alive and awake. It’s tired and full of energy. It’s full of wonder. <\/p>\n
Or maybe that’s just me. <\/p>\n
I drove back the long way because I missed the left, again. But I saw a lot of Christmas lights that direction and I wondered what Monday night will feel like after that class ends. <\/p>\n
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<\/center><\/p>\nI was listening to the “Sound of Lies,” which is the next stop on the Re-Listening project. I’m playing all of my CDs in my car, in the order in which I acquired them. This is the 1997 record from The Jayhawks, and the third of their albums in a row. I bought “Sound of Lies” and the previous one, “Hollywood Town Hall,” on the same night in 2004. I bought them because, that day, I’d gotten my acceptance letter to graduate school. <\/p>\n
That letter left me 12 days to prepare, and these records were the soundtrack, and a huge part of the musical foundation of the next year or so. <\/p>\n
Marc Olsen had left the band. Secret weapon Karen Grotberg had been with the band a few years by now. Tim O’Reagan had settled in on drums. Gary Louris was essentially the sole front man. Probably that’s the point of the terrible cover art. But don’t judge a record by the liner notes. (It was the 90s, after all.) It does not sound like the 1997 you remember<\/a>. And, as I discovered it in 2004, it was better. <\/p>\n The first track.<\/p>\n