i've gone mute on facebook; have almost 300 friends, and nothing to say to them...fortunately i still have this blog, with its lonely 4 or 5 visitors a day, a little backwater of the internet that has nevertheless been containing my thoughts & ideas for years. tonight i'm thinking about a colleague, in the hospital for a tumor, but what can i do? besides pray, and, maybe, worry. or, there's twitter. lots of stuff there, more than i can handle, so i sit here, too tired, or maybe too drained, to actually interact...the papers aren't so bad, at the moment; it's more the swimming, the bike-riding, and the fence-making (for the puppies), all in the same day, dishes, kids, cleanup, etc. and then oh yes the grading. been messing a little with my pop art (if only to organize), but would really like to take a few more pictures; some things, around town, are dying to have pictures shot of them. but, i don't grab the camera; in some ways, i'm stuck.

a lightning storm came through the other night; gave us two kinds of lightning, heat lightning, and the usual kind, which crashes down out of the sky and scares the kids & the puppies. the international students are a bit fazed too, kind of like i was when i first got to iowa: it's not that they have weather like this, it's more that they have this stuff, and then life goes on as usual. in iowa i saw lightning and snow at the same time once, and life went on as usual. in yonkers there was an ice storm the other day, and that kind of rattled my sister, but here, floods, lightning, and even a derecho (inland hurricane), and i still have no doubt that the fall will come eventually, and so will another winter.

the roof of faner hall stinks these days, and gas/oil/tar/polywhatever smell runs through the hall; then it rains, and we can see that they didn't really fix the problem. if they did, the rain would have somewhere to go. my physical exhaustion helps me take everything in stride better; i teach; i swim; i ride my bike. now, late at night, i have a hard time getting back to my papers. the assault on my building reminds me: we love that place, ugly as it is; i have embraced the gray splotched concrete squareness; i take it in as my own, in my own kind of way. i work deep in its interior these days, no windows, just computers; the concrete walls are my only reminder of the solid matter that makes up earth.

fireworks coming down from within a very cloudy sky. a high-strung puppy, barking. a dove, on the backstop wire, way above the catcher, watching the game. a baby, reminding me to watch things as god meant you to, eyes wide open. a bicycle, that runs with great effort, on very hot streets. a fan, that turns off occasionally, of its own accord. these are the signs of mid-july, dog days come early, dog days got a jump on us. i'll be back though. a new school year starts in august, when they paint those dawg paws out on the hot streets, to welcome the new students, i'll have my camera angling, and then, maybe, i'll have a status. chao...