In the key that our souls were singing
As we danced in the night
Remember, how the stars stole the night away...
Earth, Wind & Fire--September
August 29th? How in the hell did it get to be August 29th?
So, the online classes for the Fall 2012 semester just went live today. School has, for all intents and purposes, started. I'm ready to go, thanks to my new Nerd Girl glasses:
I was amused to see that the very first reading for American Lit was this:
When I first heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wandr'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars
Oh, how perfect is that for me? The fuzzy major whose every friend is a mathematician or scientist. Too funny. And to think just two nights ago I posted this quote from "learn'd astronomer" David Jewitt on my Facebook page:
Occasionally, the good young people of California ask me for my thoughts about a career in science. I tell them that 'career' is for car salesmen, doctors and corporate executives, not for me. Astronomy is an obsession, not a career. And they ask how best to do research in astronomy, as though I am some sort of an expert. But I am not. Everything I do, no matter how simple, feels to me like a new...
thing for which I am unprepared and which I know I will get wrong many times before I get it right.
I'm sensing a theme here. I wonder if Whitman understood that for some people, science and math are poetry and magic? That they are not about reducing the heavens to mere formulae, but that the formulae themselves sing to those souls?
Hmmm. Well, none of this is getting me dressed and ready for work. Sighhhh.
