Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul. — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, section 3

End of day two of the 2008-2009 academic year. Yesterday almost proved too much for me. The Thursday schedule is brutal in the morning, and there was the added layer of stress getting out the first issue of the school paper. We were having problems with page exports, and it did turn out that there was a problem with a linked jpg file that was crashing Acrobat and InDesign. But I did my very best Lady Macbeth imitations, getting crazier as the day went on.

A sample of my email to techhelp:

at 10:22 We are having export difficulties with the Weekly – We are currently logged in in my class, but I’m teaching until 11:15. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobe…

At 11:16 Adobe Error

At 1:19 Arrgh!! Now as I have waited (im)patiently for the log in to scan in my room I have the finder problem that we were having with my log in so I can’t get to the group shared folder (or any finder window).

at 1:42 – Export failed on my log in: I have to go eat something before I eat the computer – but it failed on my log in. I’m stumped!

I did not eat the computer, and I did finally figure out what the problem was (this morning) after a good night’s sleep and thinking aloud to my favorite Mac man.

Clear and sweet was the arrival this afternoon of the school paper. A back to school issue out the first week of class for the first time in years. We are posting to moodle now as well, and it is so satisfying to see it in color on-line (we print black & white on newsprint.)**

Clear and sweet were also my students. We started with Chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter today (all page and a half of it), and looked at Hawthorne’s naked themes that he tosses out without any apology (nature, decay, artifice, edifice, death and punishment, youth, age, weeds and flowers). Fifteen students – three girls and a dozen boys thinking about shame and sex and ratting out your friends. For all that is clear and sweet as well.

Time for the weekend.

**I have to shout out to my printer, the able folks at the Law Bulletin who take our pdf by 9:00 AM and deliver printed folded newspapers by 1:00 PM. Astounding, and they make me look good!