Doctura te saluto

Tomorrow afternoon, for the first time in my life, I am going to teach a class. I have summer-taught Latin. I have TA'd literature classes. I have tutored Latin and Greek. I have never been responsible for the full-semester education of eighteen young minds in the grammatical basics of Latin, with an eye toward further advancement in Classics. This will be interesting.

I must remember to buy colored chalk.

And I'll drink a health to my Creole girl and the lakes of Pontchartrain

This reminds me why I do not watch the news. (I do not own a television.) The levee has broken; Lake Pontchartrain is draining into New Orleans; someone just committed suicide in the Superdome; and it should no longer surprise me that any time Bush opens his mouth, I cannot wait for the next election, but what he says about this disaster is exactly as reassuring and useful as soggy Kleenex. You had to come back early from vacation? At least you have a home to come back to. See how blandly you can discuss devastation when your ranch has been scraped off the earth by a hurricane, mister. I cannot imagine what it is like to live in New Orleans or anywhere else along the Gulf Coast right now. And there's nothing pretty to say.