We spent the afternoon campus, because campus called for us to be there. My lovely bride had to take a few photos. And I had the chance to sit outside and enjoy the trees and the leaves and the breeze for about a half hour. Probably it wasn’t that long, but it was quiet and slow enough to feel that way, and that probably means something.
And after that I did some grading in the office, in between the casual meetings that are held in the doorways of the office.
The bulk of the afternoon was devoted to a faculty meeting. It was said that it should be a seven-hour meeting. It was two-and-a-half. I am not sure it needed to be seven. But I did learn something important about curriculum creation. And I was able to talk about our department’s social media progress — views up 174 percent, followers up 22 percent! — which is now something I oversee.
I also wrote a bunch of email today, but I think I’ve done that most every day for the last quarter of a century and it might not be that notable anymore.
I remember being so excited when I got my first email account, in college. How often I checked it. How important it felt to check frequently. How I spent way too much time coming up with absurd sig files. How I instinctively understood to avoid FWDs. I remember my first spam. Now, I’m just trying to figure out how many times I should peer into an inbox in a day. And also wondering why there’s so much in my inboxes, which I treat as To Do lists. The bigger the inbox, the more to do. And so you see the loss of appeal.
In the front yard the Acer nigrum, the black maple, is turning. This is such an interesting tree. So steady in its coloration, until this week, when the leaves begin to turn green.
It’s a large tree, fully developed and mature. Maybe 70 feet tall, and it sits right next to the road. It looks like a sentinel as you drive through. And the best part is that most of the leaves just … disappear.
We’ll gather some, but not nearly as many as have been showing off all year. Maybe they all go into the neighbor’s yard, across the street. They have one of these same trees. Who can tell where the leaves come from?
OK, back to work. I must finish preparing for class. There’s a midterm in one tomorrow, and a strategic planning exercise in the other. So there’s only the one slide deck to prepare, but, still, information must be conveyed, and I am the one that must do it.
Listening to the trees would be a better use of the evening, though.
