It seems unfair, actually, for so much ...
......I'm back. As I typed the above characters, my son ran into the kitchen to announce that his sister had gone poopers. Yep: it's a typical Sunday morning. The washer, dryer, and dishwasher are humming and spinning and grinding dirt. My son has had a tsp of health benefits, and I have lugged the laptop up to the kitchen for a late morning round of paper grading. The fall semester is surrendering to the winter term pretty darn fast, and the students and myself alike are in overdrive to wrap it all up. Plus I got the word that I am teaching three classes in the spring, which is good news--of course. But I need to force time to create the syllabus for three classes, as well as put two online classes in place. Wild times. :)
Like I said, it seems unfair--actually--for so much attention to be placed upon Halloween and Christmas while poor Thanksgiving is downgraded to a single shopping day. I do remember when it was its own event.
I did see Thanksgiving the other day on my weekly commute from the office to campus for my night class. Don't know why, but Kentucky always looks like Thanksgiving to me. The color of the sky, the sleepy stubbles of grass, the narrow, blacktop lanes that zigzag through my memories.
Even before we time traveled and "fell back" a few weeks ago, the Eat-n-Sleep diner/hotel combo caught my eye, not too far across the TN/KY state line. Happens even more so, now, with it being well into sunset when I drive by and the red OPEN sign glows and throbs. Each night, I wonder who would stay in such an out-of-the-way, secluded hotel: probably no more than four rooms. And even more curious: what would their meal needs be...that they would require their own restaurant physically attached to the hotel. The large windows pulse a white glow into the darkness, revealing it's belly. I imagine that they serve exclusively black coffee and thick cut french fries that are taken out of the fryer about a minute too early.
I smash into Russellville, Kentucky (my halfway point) and enjoy looking at the orange, red, and yellows crunchy circles of under Maple and Oak trees, the hard spongy mesophyll that covers the town's cemetery. And for some reason, even the round Civil War markers affixed to the 19th century wraparound porches amplify the fact that turkeys will soon be baked and fried and transformed into sandwiches and memories.
It's dark by the time that my Jeep break's the campus seal, but I can hear the crunching of the leaves by the students retreating from the day classes, and the chatter that I can hear out my window at seven miles an hour contains that anticipation of a long break not too far away.
On my walk toward the English building (Cherry Hall), I look up and see the struggle between the fall and winter night sky, and I am reminded that the planetarium a few feet away is having the first presentation of its Star of Bethlehem winter program, and that reminds me of poetry, and that reminds me of class, and that prompts me to shuffle the night's class around in my mind--allowing two hours of instruction to fit into sixty minutes, and that permits me to take the class to the planetarium show--in connection with a poetry extra credit assignment that the students have been hinting about for a few weeks.
And that (I realize) will put us getting out of class at the last possible moment of 9:15 p.m., and I know as well that this will cause a fourth of the class to wiggle and jiggle and slobber all over themselves from 8:45 to 9:15 p.m.--all feeling disgruntled that they had to stay so late into the evening.
But it's that time between fall and winter and there's nothing left to do, other than to relax and enjoy i, at least for me. :-)
