Film Noir

 It's funny that a person who has voted against Champlain's new Core curriculum at every step of the way would make such a deliberate and sustained effort to take advantage of said new curriculum - or maybe, more accurately, subvert said curriculum. In the fall semester I have, foolishly, four preps, covering subjects like: the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun; the Chinese novel Journey to the West; the Bedouin of the Wadi Rum (forming the core of a travel course); and a third year course on Japanese film noir.

Don't blame me, blame the Criterion Channel. It wasn't that long ago that I didn't know how fascinating Japanese film noir is.

FLA

 OK, so this is definitely not the #YankeeHellhole. A couple years ago I set myself the goal of spending more time with my oldest friend Jack and his wife Julie. It doesn't hurt that they live in Florida, which is a perfectly lovely place to spend time during the winter in VT - and maybe even more so during the wretched Mud Season (more on that later).

It's hard to believe that my ex-wife Brenda and I introduced the crazy kids to each other almost forty years ago. Like so many of the women in my life, Juju is obviously a shirt thief.