With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
October 23, 2009 - 3:49 p.m.
I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to update yesterday. I was too busy grading tests. I did take a break to go shopping and bought too much fattening food. Then I rewarded myself with my favorite dinner, porterhouse steak and French fries. I didn't finish grading till after 12:30. Then I had to make up a problem set for my classes. I've become so frustrated with the problems in the text book that I'm building up a supply of problems I wrote myself; every semester I add a few more.
My students didn't do quite as poorly as I feared, not that they did well. One class had a median of 70 and the other 60. We went over them today. Even when I was discussing how important it is for them to pay attention and to point out how much credit they lost from not listening to me, people weren't listening to me. So many of them just don’t care at all. So do though and I teach for them.
One student did worse than I expected as I know she does the work and is bright. I suspected that she has a learning disability. If she does I can give her extra time. So today I asked her. I was right. Now I can give her extra time on tests. I had a student who did that once before. The thing is she didn't do the work so it didn't help.
I'm having a minor Crohn's attack. It hit me just as I finished my dinner yesterday so it was food that I ate on Wednesday that was giving me trouble. It's a minor attack but it isn't a total obstruction. The food is getting through, it's just having trouble doing it. I am not getting the extremely painful spasm. I just feel a bit weak and bloated. None of which is stopping me from going out tonight. I haven't eaten all day but I'm meeting Erika for dinner tonight. She won tickets to see Nanci Griffith and Amy Speace from WFUV and asked me to join her. Now here's the thing. Nanci and Amy are both on my never miss list. I love them both yet there are two shows I'd rather go to. One is Richard Thompson. My Gentle Readers know he is my favorite musician. Yet his isn't the show I most want to see even though it's a special all request show. No the top show on my hit parade for today is Leonard Cohen. I might prefer Thompson but I've seen him countless times. I've never seen Cohen and he has been a favorite of mine since 1975. He doesn’t tour that often and when he does he plays large venues and charges a lot of money, two things I don't usually do. For him I'd make the exception.
Things are back to normal and I got a seat on the subway today. That meant I got to read the New York Times. Too bad I only got to read articles that started on the front page. I love all the news that's fit to print.
I have a dilemma. Should I go home? I'm meeting Erika at 6:15. If I went home now that would mean two hours traveling and spending only a hour at home. That doesn't seem worth it. If I were feeling better I'd go up to the museum of Natural History. Instead after I finish writing this I'll sit back and read the paper and maybe even take a nap.
I'm almost finished with Catcher in the Rye. I am planning on writing about on Sunday. Tomorrow is my baseball league party and I'll write about that when I get back tomorrow night.
I have the office to myself now I'm going to take advantage of that by listening to Bach's 6th Brandenburg Concerto without earbuds, put my feet up on my desk, and read the NY Times.
All Sales Are Final - October 27, 2009
Take Your Time - October 27, 2009
There is such a thing as too much chocolate - October 26, 2009
A League of Our Own - October 25, 2009
Live from Town Hall not A Mighty Wind - October 24, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile October 23, 2009
