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Thursday, March 25, 2004
HOT
My husband thinks I should take the word "hot" up there [^] out of my description of GW, the university where I teach. It is a little silly, I guess - GW ain't that hot. Still, at the moment the place is definitely on the boil. Onaccounta even as I sit here watching my Literary Criticism students take their midterm exam, some band they assure me is semi-famous is on the quad just outside the window, hotting up the crowd that's gathered on a spectacular spring afternoon to welcome John Kerry and Howard Dean. How do you write an essay about what Kant means by purposiveness without purpose while the Democratic presidential candidate calls out to his flock a few yards from your ear? It's distracting enough that overnight all the campus dogwoods have flowered and a warm sun's come in; now they've piled on a political rally too. Still, my students seem to be doing okay. Very bright and charming bunch, this class. I reminded them, as I handed out blue books, that they chose to attend a university four blocks away from the White House. If they wanted quiet, they should have gone to Kenyon. Over the years at GW, I've grown accustomed to screaming convoys of presidential limos on the street below my office. Once we all had to stay away from our windows until we got the all-clear, while President Clinton arrived to give a speech here. A sharpshooter stood atop the building across from mine, ready to pick me off if I decided to water my spiderplant. That's pretty hot, ain't it? --------------------------- [ps. - Kerry's speaking to the crowd now. Maybe it's my weak ears, but it sounded as though the crowd was more excited a few moments ago, when Dean was speaking...] [pps. - By way of explaining my continued ambivalence about "hot" - in 2002, GW was one of twelve universities named 'most hot' by Kaplan/Newsweek... |