Friday, April 17, 2009

Reason 478 Why I Love LB

Although my Civil War "Men Who Knit" talk has been in final form for nearly a week, LB came downstairs at 7:30 this morning with this image for me:



Apparently he stayed up very late last night going through all his CW books looking for knitted images just for me.

I love him for that.

The 7:30 a.m. time is unbelievable. The man is a total night owl, rarely up before 9, and completely unfunctional before 10:30. He hits his stride around 10 p.m. He knew I would be out the door before 8 a.m. and really pushed to meet me before I left.

I love him for that too.

Tomorrow's talk is set already, although if I get asked to give it again I may update it to include this image.

For now, it's just for you, dearest blog reader.

Unfortunately, the book (Antony Shaw's The Civil War Catalogue) has the photo mislabeled as a forage cap and there's no discussion of the history or provenance of the item. What you're looking at was known as a balaclava. Today we would call it a helmet liner.

________________
Today was final draft day for Paper #3.

  • Late arrivals: 9
  • No shows with no word: 4
  • Walk outs in the middle of class: 1
  • Electronic submissions in incompatible formats: 1 (wtf is ".odt" anyway?)
  • Need to pick grandma up at the airport: 1
  • My printer broke: 1
  • My car won't start: 2
  • Flat tires: 2

I don't care. I just walked across campus to see an exhibit by a photography class. They partnered with homeless people, taught them some photography skills and worked together to title and describe the resulting works. The photos were stark and uplifting and almost heartbreakingly full of hope. On the way back to my office, the sun was out, kids were playing hacky sack in the quad, the drum circle was bolstered by a didgeridoo, and a young woman was using a megaphone to remind her friends lying on the grass about Darfur.

It's all part and parcel, and I love that too.

3 comments:

Peggy Graham said...

I can help you with one of your questions: ".odt" is "office document text" meaning a document created by OpenOffice, a free download multiplatform office suite which is compatible with MS Word and other major office suites. Apparently your student forgot to "save as" to convert the file into a ".doc" file prior to submission.

Those of us who are not fans of Microsoft use this extensively instead of shelling out the megabucks for MS Office.

Bridgett said...

We use .odt too, but Peggy beat me to it.

My mother, you know, is an adjunct at a couple of jr colleges, and this past Friday was the viewing of "Othello" and a paper due. Eighteen students are in her class. Two showed up. She let them both know she was giving them both As.

Lenora said...

Thanks for sharing the 'fruit' of LB's labour.