Made it to Urbana, Illinois to begin my eight weeks courses. I notice that storms always take the same route when they leave Tulsa. They travel up I-44 to St. Louis, then by the time they get here to Urbana/Champaign, they're colder, punchier. It's definitely colder. I froze all day
I'll be here for a week to get things going, then return for two more meetings. For the most part the courses will be online, which I'm finding takes more work in the set up. There will be more heavy one-on-one engagement with the students. Next year, it's back to in-residence.
It's harder and harder to leave home. Tonight I'm in my hotel room, finishing up a syllabus. I rewrite them the same way I rewrite my poems, stories, scripts, or songs. Often it's the end of a semester when they're fine tuned. But that's the way I am. I start earlier and earlier on them but it's a process. I wish I could just pull out a syllabus and re-use it, but I'm not that kind of teacher. I always have to start all over, and that makes it more work intensive. Like my successive projects: books of poetry, CD's of music...I never do the same thing twice. Sometimes I'd rather not be that way. I can't even write the same letter twice successively when I write cursive.
I am not used to this cold. The morning starts out in the 40's and didn't appear to warm up much over 60. I caught a chill. Walked a mile back to the hotel, stopped and got a warm scarf, then some soup. Tonight when I reached for my bag with my money, credit cards, and IDs, it was gone. The scarf store is closed. And the Japanese soup place didn't have it. I used cash in my pocket there. It was either stolen in the restaurant, or is in the first store.
Still have two hours to work, then need to be up and out early to get to be ready. And wondering how I'll get by without cash or cards or ID's. I've called the banks...we'll see.
It's one of those days---
Tomorrow will brighten with students.
Signing out--
