Friday, July 30, 2004

Telos

Two classes down. And for what I believe may in fact be the very first time in my all-too-long career as a student, I actually finished every assignment either on the day it was due or (gasp!) early. Only now do I discover the joys of time management! Oh, well. It feels good to have a month off with no obligations. I was supposed to start teaching in August, but I think I'm going to try and put that off until after Labor Day, as I could really use some evening at home with the wife and the kid (who return tomorrow after a week with the in-laws).

Although I've been busy as Hell, I managed to read an entire book during Summer School - The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier, by Colin Woodward. It's an ambitious work, covering the whole of coastal Maine history from its very creation at the end of the last Ice Age to its modern incarnation as "Vacationland," and I have to say that Woodward, a Maine native, manages to transition from ethnography to oceanography and back again while telling one heck of a story. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who finds Maine endlessly fascinating!

Meanwhile, I've been working my way through the first few chapters of Red Sox Century that my wife got me for my birthday. As it's simply jam-packed full of facts and figures the bestselling compilation is the sort of book you digest a small bit at a time, but even if I just make my way through half a page I end up learning a dozen new things about my beloved Sox that I never knew before. Sadly, however, I am learning that if there is anything truly constant about the Olde Towne Team it's that it has been plagued by mismanagement since the very beginning of the franchise - a curse far more potent than that of the Bambino...

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