A Tuesday in July

First, an interesting aside about the "Weekend in Sparta" post. Alleghany [County] High School is in the town of Sparta. They call themselves the Trojans, which seems rather odd to me given the "fact" that Sparta and Troy were on opposite sides of the Trojan War. Seems to me that the Alleghany Spartans would've been more appropriate. After all, the Spartans were known for their physical power, which ought to fit nicely with most any high school sport (male or female). Maybe they thought that naming the school the Spartans privileged the town over the rest of the county. Or maybe they just thought that Sparta and Troy could be easily lumped together as parts of the ancient world--which actually suggests a certain lack of thinking. Why am I going on about this? I really don't know! -- 11:48 a.m.

Richard Roberts--"running for Congress"--frightens me! (I just heard one of his hyper-conservative TV messages from the other room.)

Apart from the little blurb above, I spent most of the morning in my office reading Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799). Not a great novel. But what a great job! Then, after I brought Raleigh home from school, I mowed the yard. Raleigh had tae kwon do tonight (6:30-8:30), so we were off to north Johnson City for that. He's a third-degree black belt, by the way.

While Raleigh was working out, I went to Kroger and ran into a student I had in American Literature I last spring. His name is Sam, and he's trying to finish up a degree in Accountancy, I think. We had a good talk. He's an older student, usually a pleasure for those of us teaching at the college level. While one older student in Sam's class wasn't a pleasure (she looked like she was my age, near 50, and she stunk of beer at 9:45 every Tuesday and Thursday morning), Sam was great. He's looking to go after his Master's degree, and I told him that, if he was as good with accounting as he was with early American literature, he ought to go for it.

Once I picked Raleigh up and got him home, Leesa and I nudged him through getting packed for tomorrow's trip to Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. His youth group at church has been there since Sunday, carrying on with their mission trip. Raleigh's in school, so he wasn't able to go for the whole week, but we'll leave right after school tomorrow and take him to meet them. He'll join them for their last work day on Thursday, their play day on Friday and their trip home on Saturday. He has ideas of going into construction of some sort one day, so he's excited about getting to work at least one day while there. He loves that stuff!

Leesa and I will stay in Mt. Pleasant's Red Roof Inn tomorrow night (Wednesday) and on Thursday morning drive up to Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a vising with our granddaughter Mackenzie. We saw Lane and Morgan this past weekend, so this overnight in Fayetteville is mostly to be with the little one. Then we'll travel back home on Friday.

Day is done, plans for tomorrow are made, and the bed is turned down. All in all, a good solid day of human being. -- 10:59 p.m.


240.6 NWT