Speaking for Sarah

I'm alive and well, just drowning in grading. I am teaching more than I would have thought possible, four nights a week on top of my day job. So, not much time for blogging.

In spite of being exhausted all the time, I am enjoying the extra teaching. I have moments, perhaps while reading Shakespeare aloud with my intro to literature class, where I think, "What could I possibly be doing at home that could be more fun?"

Then there was the other night, when, as I was leaving the more advanced, junior-level class, I ran into my friend Professor Knows-His-Stuff at the elevator. I said to him, ruefully, "These kids know more about meter than I do!"

(Later I thought, Did I actually say that? Did I think I was in some kind of 1950s movie? Of course they're not kids, not even the ones that are traditional college-age, and many of them are older than that.)

I guess I had said it partly to be funny. But then, while we were standing by the elevator, I made my friend wait while I rummaged through my backpack so I could show him the poem we had been discussing in class. I kept pulling out one piece of paper and then another, making him hold them while I continued to search. I said apologetically, knowing he was on the way home, "I know this is very important." I meant it ironically, but he thought for a moment, and then said, rather impishly, "Well, I think meter is important."

Eventually I found the poem and showed it to him. I told him how I had been explaining meter to the class, and we had talked a lot about iambic pentameter (of course), and how when we were going over this poem, I had just quickly scanned it in my head 30 seconds before we talked about it and satisfied myself that it was iambic tetrameter. But when I asked what the meter was, one student said, "It's the opposite of iambic pentameter." I was thinking about the tetrameter aspect and thought, what does she mean, how could four beats be the opposite of five beats? Then I realized she was talking about where the stresses fell--I said, "Oh, yes, there are some reversals, poets do that sometimes, they insert what's called a trochee instead of an iamb, especially at the beginning of a line." Then another very very smart student pointed out a line that seemed, well, totally trochaic. I was flustered. Could it be that the whole poem was trochaic? I had just finished explaining that that was an uncommon meter.

Somehow I gracefully ended the discussion (I moved us on quickly to feminine endings) but when I saw Professor Knows-His-Stuff, an expert on all things metric and almost everything else, I had to tell him the story and show him the poem. After I found it, he read it, while we were standing by the elevator, and gave me his diagnosis: "Yup, it's trochaic."

I thought, "Well, I'll be."

And, later, I thought about how remarkable it is that I have this life, where I detain a colleague on his way home, after we've both had a long day, to grill him about iambs and trochees, and we both think it's worth it to stand there talking about such matters.

To calm us all down after the excitement of this week, here are some lovely pictures I took last Sunday while walking through the park in my neighborhood. As usual, I had trouble picking one or two, so you get several. They're chronological, a record of my circle around the park on the first of those shortened afternoons that come with the return to Standard Time.

This was the scene at my polling place this morning. I waited on line, happily, for 45 minutes, to vote for Barack Obama. I went to work, left during the day for a doctor's appointment, came back, went to my other job, didn't get home until nine o'clock. As I was walking home from the subway, I heard shouting out the windows. When I got home and turned on the TV, they were saying that Ohio had just gone for Obama. I watched the various pundits for two hours, as more and more states went blue. At 11, all of a sudden, it was over! Jim Lehrer was still talking and that number went from 220 to 275--California had gone for Obama. Almost involuntarily, I was drawn to my window looking out over the street. A car going by honked joyfully. I yelled out the window and waved to some people standing in a clump outside on the other side of the street. Then I was just too excited to stay in my apartment so I threw some clothes on over my sweatpants and went out, to be outside and feel it, feel hope and gratitude and relief. I talked to a man standing on my side of the street, in that way that strangers do when history is happening. Then he went back inside, and I did, too. I cried all though McCain's concession speech, not because I was sad for him but because I couldn't believe it was true, we'd done it, we'd elected this smart, compassionate, forward-thinking man and he's African-American, this country has an African-American president, who would have ever thought that could happen?

Now Obama's speech is over and I've shut off the TV. There have been a few more cars going by, honking, and I hear sounds of revelry, people at parties who have also shut off the TV and are now just celebrating, drinking, it sounds like, and yelling. As the guy I was talking to outside said, it's kind of like New Year's Eve.

New Year's Eve or no, since I was exhausted four hours ago, when I got home from my two jobs, and since I have to do the whole thing over again tomorrow, I'm heading off to bed, to celebrate in my dreams.

To everyone who voted today, nice work. Even if you voted for the other guy.