three nice things about shorter hair

When I swim, no melon-sized ball of hair pulls my swim cap off.

After I shower, I can towel-dry (almost).

When I leave the gym with wet hair, it still turns into icicles, but at least they're not waist-length icicles.

another sign i've grown up (kids these days part ii)

There's the fact that I'm now the sort of person who, instead of causing a spritely ruckus in a public place, wants to grouchily quote the New York Times about the young folk causing a ruckus in a public place. One of the boys is wearing an example of those cartoony sweatshirts the Times Style section was reporting on a few weeks ago. These kids are talking outrageously loudly, playing music, breaking things that sound like glass, and singing. The girls are tee-heeing in squeaky voices in order to indicate to the boys how they are good girls enough to protest but bad girls enough to secretly think the boys being baaaad are sexxxxy. It's a public library for god's sake. I read another NY Times story, or maybe it was npr (so old, so very old), about a town that had to close its public library in the after-school hours because the kids were making too many scenes and vandalizing too much. I want to tell these kids to go to the mall. I also want to be shocked that no librarian has chosen to take these kids to task, but in the end, I decide that it's yet another example of adults not wanting to mess with kids who might be considered "dangerous." I mean, the bulk of them are African American, and you know what that might mean. Sheesh. Stove, how's that essay on fear coming? Because I think the aforementioned would be an interesting kind of fear to tackle writing about.

kids these days!

How can a student actually think it's acceptable to read a newspaper in class? I know it's 9am, but man. Get it together. And why is it always the Sports section? I'd love to see someone attempt to read the Wall Street Journal in my class. Or maybe Savage Love. I might even give them extra credit for that.

Today

• I read about meter and breath, bump up against old friends, such as"we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon...," and "two vast and trunkless legs of stone," begin to think in iambs again. Get dreamy about being young and lounging about on grassy fields in the Hudson Valley, memorizing from enormous volumes.
• Stephen Fry demonstrates to me why some people think that the British are more erudite than Americans.
• Someone I know shows up as a missed connection on craigslist, proving again to me what a small town this really is.
  
• I become disillusioned about the politics of the MFA program. Professionalism and art are not mutually exclusive, people!
  
• I laugh, because what else is there to do, about Bush's claim that new innovations will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil: "bicycles!" say I, "legs!" says V.
• I decide I really need to learn more about Jim Webb.
  

hot off the presses

Indiana Review Issue 28.2 is out! The issue features fiction by Richard Wirick, Marjorie Celona and Jonathan Hull as well as poetry by Bob Hicok, Susan Tichy,and James Capozzi and our own Sarah Cohen. There's also a very timely interview with Richard Ford. Check it out.