… UD finds herself surrounded by the annual American Political Science convention. She was vaguely aware Mr UD was taking part in a panel or two somewhere downtown, but it all turns out to be here, where, in an hour, we’re meeting our old friend David Mayers (who is himself giving a paper).
My first week of classes is over.
Students move me. They always have. Try walking through a beautiful campus on a mild afternoon, beautiful and thoughtful young people drifting swanlike around you, without feeling joy. My heart is fiercely protective of the younger ones, the freshmen… I have dreadful imaginings about them… Do they have friends? Are their roommates cruel or kind? Are they walking around Foggy Bottom in a devastated haze, wondering why they left LaCrosse? The idea that they’re not adrift in a swanlike way but in helpless despair upsets ol’ UD badly, and she deals with it by reminding herself that the university knocks itself out to welcome new students and surround them with friends… They’re fine, you fool… They’re out clubbing and when they’re not clubbing they’re driving to New Orleans with friends to build a Habitat for Humanity house…
You want to think everybody’s okay.
**********************
When you teach romanticism, you see in their eyes the peculiar sort of reflection that is at once about an old poem on a page and their own immediacies. This is beautiful to see. They drift into your seminar room, they settle in to their seats, and they proceed to lock onto deep themes.
UD routinely witnesses good minds at work in real time. It’s a privilege.