This Small Life

Garrison Keillor's assessment that "people tend to live rather small lives" (oh, isn't his phrasing just lovely?) sparked some nice discussion in class today. I suppose in one way or another Keillor's weekly Prairie Home Companion with his stories of the people of Lake Wobegone comprises descriptions of particular ways in which people do live out small lives. And we love to listen to those stories of his, partly because we love to laugh at the smallness of others, partly because in hearing those stories, we recognize that same smallness in ourselves. Even if we live in New York City, each of us must live a small life in some way or another -- we are confined by our age, our background, our education, our race, our religion, our income, our family, our friends, and well, our humanity. In class we seemed to think that smallness is a bad thing -- is it always? Perhaps it's only the failure to recognize the ways in which we might live small lives that might be bad? Or how about this, is there a way to live a small life and yet have an expanded mind? To live in Plato's cave, so to speak, and yet contemplate the Forms?

Fall Begins

Though fall officially began a couple of days ago, today, the first day back to Whatcom, felt like the real beginning of this autumnal season. The hustle and bustle of any school hall in the first week of classes is surely what most, perhaps jarringly, marks autumn's beginning. One week, I'm walking at a leisurely pace through deserted corridors, the next week, my walk is brisk and business-like, and I'm making my way past and through other brisk walkers and through echoing sound and conversation.

I suppose I like this sudden change, it's more exciting than jarring -- there's something rather amazing about this convergance of so many people at one place at one time. There's something amazing about the fact that we are all here for the united purpose of education, either to learn or to teach or to administrate that learning and teaching. So many of us, so many different kinds of us, and we are here together, in this one place -- we come here for ourselves, for our own purposes, but we find ourselves intersecting with the lives and purposes of others and, and I know we will be changed by those intersections, those meetings.

I wonder, at the start of this year, whom will I meet? Whom will I be changed by? Whom will I perhaps affect in some way or another? Already, I am intrigued by the students in my class -- I'm looking forward to knowing them better, to hearing their voices, seeing the paths on which their thoughts take them. And I wonder, what will they teach me?

This fall day.
This school day.
Now, we begin.