Sunday Walk And Upcoming Teaching

Lovely long walk to the rose garden after brunch at our diner. The Morcome Ampitheatre of Roses is having something of a second wind, it would seem: blooms are multiplying deliriously again in the August sun, there were more blooms and there was more fragrance in the air since we've strolled there in the early spring. As usual, we shared this vast magical place of fountains and shady lanes and elegant geometries of orange and yellow and cascading purple with fewer than a dozen other Oaklanders under that tight sheet of pure blue sky. Such a miracle of a place. This afternoon, I'm reading works on ecological city planning and technofixes from geoengineering to digi-denialism for Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday, we're screen the recent sequel to Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, a film I've never taught before or even seen! Since we began we AIT, the sequel brings us full circle as we finish up this six-week intensive. Yes, this is the last of twelve weeks of summer teaching at Berkeley this year. I'll admit I'm feeling quite breathless, cramming three weeks' instruction into every week for nearly three months straight. I'm ready for a break and a birthday -- unfortunately, I've got just under two weeks between the last of my summer lectures and the first of the fall, with final grading and syllabus reframing to get done in between. No rest for the weary!