"A poor soul burdened with a corpse," Epictetus calls you.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Four
I really do need to design a Champlain course based around the Meditations. A couple years ago I put in a proposal for a first year course as part of our new curriculum, but it wasn't chosen. While I suspect this particular passage wouldn't resonate with my students (if anything resonates with them . . .) but it definitely speaks to me as I slide deeper into my 60s.
Some more pictures of the backroads of Vermont. As my life seems to inexplicably lead me to central Vermont I guess it's natural and unavoidable that more pictures of it pop up. I wish I could say that I took these with my new camera, but I simply snapped them with my phone. And, no, they're not black & white, but simply the extraordinary winter beauty (desolation) of Vermont.
My friend Frank sent me this picture this morning. It's of my friend Doug and me in our first year of graduate school. This picture was taken in March 1983. Was I ever actually this young - and in graduate school? God, no wonder our professors in graduate school at UC thought we were morons (plus, they were perceptive).
It also got me thinking about the time that Doug was a finalist for the position of Provost here at Champlain. The college, as part of an endless string of dreadful administrative hires, didn't choose him. It did give us the chance to spend several blissful hours on the deck of the Saint John's Club reflecting on life, history, love, and friendship; essentially, it turned into the closing passage of Flaubert's Sentimental Education (which I recently re-read - it simply, unlike us, gets better with age).
