Apologetic Blog

I apologize to my more loyal readers for my failure to keep updating the blog lately. It's been something of a mad, mad, mad, mad week for me including lots of work and lots of socializing. I even had students in my office burning the late-evening oil all week just because they wanted to hang out and talk about history, school, and their gawdawful jobs. Now, I do love that - it's very good for the ego, and it's fun to find out more about my students in a different atmosphere, but it cuts down on the blogging time.
More than that though, I just couldn't think of anything to say about any news that was or wasn't happening. I didn't want to be purely in diary mode because that's of limited interest. But, here goes on both counts....
News you've already heard: Patrick Fitzgerald is going to do a press conference at 2pm today. THAT should be interesting. I loved seeing the headline "Fright House" when I was rushing by a newsstand yesterday.
and here's a neither profound nor revealing diary: This week at school was, despite midterms, light-hearted and fun. I played Ma Rainey's "Black Bottom" for a number of my classes yesterday, and students had funny comments to make and seemed ready to run out and buy a bunch of her CDs. One said, "It's like the original rumpshaker." I also played this song by Frank Hutchison, The last scene of the Titanic,which you can listen to online at the internet archive website.
I am heading into an event-filled weekend and I will try to have more profound reflections upon these events for you, and possibly halloween costumed pictures in my next entry. For now: Enjoy the weather and the crazy carnivalesque atmosphere that Halloweeen weekend will bring to our burg. Did you see any costumes on the train yesterday? I saw a guy dressed as "Burger King." I couldn't figure out if he was crazy or on his way to a party. possibly both.