Day 54 "In the trenches" (third-wind edition)

Though it's not yet April, you can feel the school year moving into what's basically the third trimester. The morning-sickness is mostly done; the kids are used to the weight they're carrying; the spring break hiatus / forgetfulness / general lack of focus is past and recovered from; and we're getting ready to give birth to another completed year.

OK, that metaphor was overdone, and--coming from a male person--probably uninformed and ill-chosen. But there is an unescapable sense, around about now, that the worst of the crises are gone and that anybody who's still here is likely going to be able to complete the process--even if there are screaming labor pains right at the end.

[ETA:

Day got away from me. Personnel shifts, teaching, a ton of committee-based problem-solving, visits with donors, and an extended response over on Terminal Degree about the psycho-sexual dynamics academia and alcohol. More tomorrow.

Below the jump: warm spring day on campus. The large silver sphere in the foreground is a piece of sculpture commissioned by our uni's large public-art program (hey, 1% of operating budget earmarked for public-art works is a large investment on a Texas public university campus); it's got two internal user-manipulated gongs which are pitched to the overtones of the sun's own resonance. Of course, the typical Meat Science major (gimme cap, pickup truck, t-shirt, incipient potbelly as the leftover-childhood eating patterns of biscuits & gravy, pizza, and several gallons of Lite Beer a week start to catch up with him) tends to say "Waal, that's a damn waste a' time"--these are the same people who have 150% life-size statues of longhorns outside their very posh new lab building--but for we musicians, and especially considering the sculpture stands equidistant between the Music building and the library, it's pretty cool.