Musings

Musings 

Some  random thoughts near the end of the term. Once again it's been an amazing journey, what with steers loose on the ag campus, (go figure), fascinating feedback to various newspaper articles I've written about this and that, interesting classes about more this and that and, in general, a very satisfying quarter. Too much work, but satisfying nonetheless. And, once again, it's awfully good to know that the old brain still has a bit of spark left in it, that all that supposedly lethal white, middle-class, hetero, Christian, suburban mediocrity hasn't completely killed what curiosity and skepticism I've tried my damndest to nurture all these years. It's still there; in fact, it's if anything stronger than ever. The older I get, the feistier I get, just ask my wife. I guess that's one of the unwritten benefits of education, at any level, the demand to accept nothing at face value, and to keep asking why, why why ad nauseam. If I had to settle for any one conclusion at this late date, it would be this: why in bloody hell can't we just do what we say we will, or at least say we won't do something and mean it? Do we humans of necessity need to indulge our hypocrisy at every turn? What ever happened to good, old-fashioned 'NO,' I'm not going to do that--be deferential to whites/blacks/women/latinos etc., or 'NO,' I don't believe ________(fill in the blank). It is always better to say it up front, than to say what it is we really never meant. Does that make sense?

Musings, that's all. It's one way we convince ourselves we're still alive.