Make the day seem to us less brief

Currently in KW: 24. Down to 6 here this morning.

We're in one of those September stretches (but I keep thinking it's October--whenever I get busy, I'm always thinking it's later than it is; yesterday felt all day long like some Wednesday in the middle of October) when there's no clouds for days and the bottom has dropped out of the air but the sun's still got some kick to it and there's no flow of cold air whisking away the sun-heated air, so the daily temperature spread can get near 20 degrees ... at least it can here in KW; not so much back in the urban heat bubble and lake-breeze zone--it's 22 at Pearson right now, and got down to 11 this morning. I'm surprised again this year at how much earlier the trees change here than they do in Toronto (and how much redder the maple reds are).

When I sat down here in the WLU library, it occurred to me, among the general murmur (which unfortunately was a low ebb; it's now up to the dull roar that's been standard here on what I call the party floor for the last several years), that this must be not unlike the monastery libraries in the days before people figured out that they could read without talking.

The guy walking around yakking on his cellphone, on the other hand....

Last night I heard an ad on the radio during the Jays game, one of those phone ads with someone singing a song about how they don't love their phone anymore, and the ad says you should love your phone and let us help you get a phone to love, and I heard a line in the song about how she doesn't love her phone anymore and her phone is two or three years old ... two or three years old! I have a phone. You know how old my phone is? I don't know how old my phone is. My phone is older than my memory. It was in my house before I knew what phones were.

I'm teaching the Republic in both of my courses now. (One course is just on the Republic; in the other, we're moving on to Aristotle and so on next week.) There's so much to be said! But I can't take the time to say it. If I had the time to say it, there wouldn't be so much to be said. This is very close to one of the lessons of the Republic.

Didn't see the no-tail squirrel on Monday (though I was steaming by in a hurry for the Greyhound). This week it died of natural causes.