Not exactly subtle

I know there are people besides me who remember Glenn Close best for her singing, rather than her way with pointy objects and family pets:

The colors of my life
Are softer than a breeze.
The silver gray of eiderdown,
The dappled green of trees.
The amber of a wheat field,
The hazel of a seed,
The crystal of a raindrop,
Are all I'll ever need....
       -- Charity Barnum, "The Colors of My Life", Act I, Barnum! Cy Coleman and Michael Stewart, 1979.

Um, no.  I’m more attracted to a blaze of color, a flash of lightning, a combination of pigments that pop off the page.  But, much like my Myers-Briggs scores, that’s subject to mood changes, what happens to be around me at the time, and other sensory input:  when traveling in the New England mountains I’m just as likely to take a picture of wild grasses next to a barn as I am to snap a shot of a decaying turquoise Ambassador car next to an aging red tractor.

So taking a color workshop this weekend was a nice tonic — there were moments when I’d genuinely not understand what was being asked, and that  in itself was a delight, because it meant there was something just beyond my grasp, waiting to be learned.  That sort of edge-of-knowing experience is a great preparation for going back into the classroom; although I know it’s optimistic to think that my undergrads will be as eager to learn new things as I am.

When you teach required classes, there’s going to be a certain % of people just there to get the requirements out of the way, and the 20% of people who would have been in the classroom 40 years ago are not always aware of the fact the curriculum was designed with them in mind…at least not at first. Then there’s the majority, reasonably open-minded and relieved that this required class, unlike the other options, does not involve cutting anything open, anything that smells strange, or anything that involves mud. [I do wish I could work the mud part in, though. Would probably do all of them some good, providing everyone really did have their shots…]