The last couple of days...

...have been busy! I've been packing up to go to Socorro---it's harder than you think to pack for six months. On the one hand, it's a long time, and I have to make sure to remember a can opener. On the other hand, it's not forever, and so I don't get to just throw everything in boxes! It's a lot like leaving for college, actually, except that so much less of my life is taken care of---no dorm furniture, no dorm food, no roommates with whom to share stuff.

I've also been catching up on my enviro-blog, and a hundred little small things that I wanted to get done before I head south. And, I've been doing a bit of homesteading, as a way of controlling my economy jitters. I haven't been running, because I somehow (not running) stressed a tendon in my foot, so it needs the rest.

Today, I had to run in to the office and do a lot of paperwork, to close out the big grant, and open the new contract with NRAO. So that took a while.

But then I went down to the Union, to see what's new. I wandered into the bookstore, which I hadn't been in for a while. I was in the textbooks section, where I found several books that I can use to fill out my enviro-knowledge. A fortuitous discovery. Way to go Zoo, Geo, Geog, and Soc!

They also had a display of banned books, which I always appreciate. So does the bookstore. I can never walk past a display of banned books without buying at least one, in protest of censorship, and support of the First Amendment. Maybe that's silly, because it's clearly a marketing ploy, and who's going to notice, really. But on the other hand, The Grapes of Wrath? Banned? Really? Ugh. The world is not a pretty place, and literature helps us understand it better. Pretending that it IS pretty does not make the ugly go away. But finding out how other people think about it can make it easier to think about it yourself. I can't even imagine my life without The Grapes of Wrath, or Huckleberry Finn, or A Wrinkle in Time. I mean seriously. A Wrinkle in Time?! That was the book that taught me that the Universe could be so much bigger than I ever imagined. It was also the first book I ever read where the girl genuinely got to be both troubled and a hero. Don't even get me started on Of Mice and Men or The Catcher in the Rye. The Handmaid's Tale or Harry Potter. The Bluest Eye or I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Oh, how much less my life would be without these magnificent ideas, magnificently expressed.

Some people must be very frightened. All the time. Of everything. How dreadful.