Shorter Teaching Day

Classes went well yesterday, this year's students seem comparatively more talkative than in recent years past, and this makes lectures more engaging. Still, the back to back lectures were demanding, and I returned home late and quite exhausted. Mondays are going to be a slog. In my graduate seminar today we turn to sustainable design discourse, Viridians, biomimicry, cradle-to-cradle, permaculture. Most of this stuff amounts to greenwashing in my opinion, but I do find Wes Jackson and the Land Institute interesting and inspiring at any rate. The Bruce Sterling Viridian stuff has not aged well at all, I am finding. My notes are far more sparse and my expectations looser for the grad seminar, today's at any rate. We'll see how the conversation unfolds...