Summer drags on and on. Some people are summer people loving heat and light. I am not.
My University is now on a Semester system, has been for some years now. So school starts a week or two before labor day.
Yes we settled the strike, the night before classes were to happen. Our take home will diminish over the next three years relative to inflation, unless the economy tanks, but what are we to do? The state is cutting us another 1.5 million dollars this year, and that is not even taking inflation into account.
A hundred years ago professors used to make four times the average income of someone in America working 12 months. At least one, G.H.M., complained that his salary was not sufficient to easily keep his and his wife’s nice clothes, good food, societal position, servants, laundry service and gardener. His budget was tight.
Ah, to have been that professor, freed of house and garden maintenance aside from what I wanted to do, being concerned about appearances in society. Well, maybe that would onerous. Appearances.
The U.S.A. used to have the best education in the world. These days we slip, and slip. No one much minds that we are 7th or13th. Our economy once flourished with innovation. Now we prefer to spend on advertising we want to convince the masses to buy based on name or sexiness, actual advances are secondary. We no longer truly care about academic excellence.
I am sluggish and slow and cranky with the long hot summer. Fall invigorates me. Crisp air, brilliant colors in my lovely park, the prospect of sharp night and a sharp mind await. Soon, soon.
For now it has been dry since the remains of destructive Katrina poured rain on us. I no longer can convince myself to water or mow. Tomatoes hang ripe, red peppers sit on bushes. Basil has gone wild and flowered. I need to tend to them. I just need cooler air and some time.
All our seasons are strangely shifted here. year after year I notice the same thing summer lingering into October. Then glorious color, a shot of adrenaline in sparkling clean air. Winter is delayed until January. Often enough deep freezes linger into April. Spring is cold, cold until May or June, then a short and vivid spring and back into the long energy and thought sapping summer.
I long for fall. I want to have energy. I want to WANT to be at my University. I want rain. I want to be able to think again.
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3 comments:
I am surprised that your weather is that different from ours. It has been muggy lately, but Fall is definitely on its way. Leaves are changing already; I saw one tree on my way home today that is almost bare (albeit ahead of its neighbors). Winter has its hooks set in November. It doesn't necessarily snow a lot until January, but it is cold cold cold, and it snows into March.
I'm with you on the economics of education.
Autumn is well and truly set in in the Olde Country (Rian is an evil influence on how I talk), I assure you. It utterly poured down with rain yesterday, today was crisp and clear and cold, and tonight parts of the country are apparently due frost. You'll get it soon I'm sure.
But a small fact that may interest you - it has recently been shown from the records of a man who kept a record of when he cut his grass for the last twenty years (he seems a little strange) that the grass is growing for a whole month longer in the summer in Britain these days than it did twenty years ago. That rather took me aback.
Hmm... we have had no rain in the South, Skit. But, even though it has been beautifully sunny today, the air is definitely chillier now. Especially in the evenings. We may have to put our central heating back on soon...
Indeed, Heather, crisp air means a clear mind. So gorgeously refreshing, I could drink it in.
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