One more week.

That's what I'm telling myself right now.

(The snowflakes have become a right blizzard. I know to expect that the approaching end of a semester will bring panic to the unprepared, but this year it seems worse - or I am less tolerant of it - than in the past).

I think part of the problem is I need to get out of my "headspace," so to speak - right now everything is so wrapped up with work that I can't quite see anything else.

It will be so good to get home to see my family. So good to "run away" for a few days. So good to have some time to knit and some time to read. (I've already started going through books for train-reading. I ordered one - I hope it comes in time - on the Dust Bowl (it's by Timothy Egan). I realized, watching a documentary on the Dust Bowl this weekend, that there's a lot I don't know about it. And while I refer to it in Soils, I feel like I should probably teach more on it, seeing as we live in one of the states affected by the Dust Bowl. And also, and this is related to my discussion of Veteran's Day, I think a lot of people in my generation and in the younger generations aren't as aware of some of the not-all-that-distant history of our country.

And besides, having experienced a time (several years ago) when there was a lot of wind erosion (from West Texas - I was driving back from McKinney and saw all the fine-textured soil being blown through the air), I realize that people need to know about the risks of wind erosion, and maybe people who wind up being land managers or ranchers or something (or even who just own land) will try to do things to prevent it, if they know what it's like.

I do have a link to some old footage of one of the dust storms - it's kind of grainy and hard to see what's in it, but maybe it and some of the photos will bring home some of the magnitude of how bad it was.

And I think reading the book will help me consider how to frame the discussion, and what to include.)