October 31, 2014

Dark of Halloween morning. We did two school shows of Macbeth yesterday, to audiences which I thought were good and attentive, though people with better sight than mine saw kids texting. Enjoyed it, enjoyed my fellow stage workers. Ate donuts, which in the past years I have almost never done. The way there and back was like driving through an oven heated gold and red, though why that image occurs to me I don’t know, for it was also cool. They threaten snow for tonight. I will gather a great bouquet of the remaining (quite numerous) roses. One tree on the theater grounds is an amazing graying reddish brown.

Reading a biography of Duncan Grant.

Much of the workload at the end of the semester consists of unnecessary impositions by an administration which justifies itself by the power to demand busywork and to sap the time and energy of others. Post-tenure review, all set about with high falutin’ documentation, as though we were applying for the job we’ve been doing well for thirty years, which flatters the vanity of our overseers. I don’t remember receiving a performance report from the deans or the provost or the various titles which much be jollied from time to tome, and they are what goes awry when things go awry. The structure of higher education is so many carts trying to move before so many horses.

Dreary rehearsal in Marshall. I want to stay and socialize, like a good boy, at the end, but I find my feet willy-nilly bearing me at speed toward the door.

My scarlet canna is only now edging toward bloom. I have disserved it in some way–.