I used to love going to the airport in Des Moines and watching the planes.  Now you can do it via YouTube - and see cooler planes than ever came to Des Moines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFLDfP6HkwM

Not sure about anyone else but I was devastated by the election.  How in the world could anyone look at this buffoon and think that he had the temperament or qualifications to run this country?  Just amazes me.

But he won.

So now what to do?  One of the frustrating things about this is that I know that I will be long gone before the country begins to recover from the damage that he is going to cause.

But the Methodist Grandma used one of my favorite Bible verses after the election:

Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.

And then there's the story of my grandfather.  Born in 1899, dropped out of school after the sixth grade so he could help full time on the farm.  Spent his life working the land, providing for his family, through the dusty years of the Great Depression, and after.  He always loved trees - and planted some religiously every year, on his small Iowa farm.  As he grew older, he slowed down a little bit, but still went out every spring and planted one or two walnut trees.  I asked him once - being an obnoxious teenager - why he did that when he likely wouldn't be around to harvest any walnuts from the trees.  He smiled and used that as a teaching opportunity for me - to talk about our responsibility to do good, no matter whether we see the results or not - doing good is it's own reward.

So that's my inspiration - I'm going to redouble my efforts to take America back from Trumpism -- after all a majority of voters went for Hillary, not him.

https://www.facebook.com/reverbpress/photos/a.747117125377648.1073741830.731244080298286/1165019736920716/?type=3

Okay so it's been awhile.... I got an email out of the blue a couple months ago asking if I would like to teach a class this semester - spring, 2011. Sure, I said!

It's going better this time I think - I just have one class - that's better anyway - plus there are only 16 students. I've had two or three of them in class before - and almost everyone is an adult student. They're always better - been out in the real world and they have no more illusions about how wonderful they are, and how lucky you are to have them in your classroom!

So, so far, it's been kind of fun.

We did get off to a slow start - it's a Monday/Wednesday class - and the first week the University was pretty well shut down because of the big winter storm we got - 8 inches of snow here, with an ice glaze over the top of it. Atlanta doesn't do well when it snows. So I'm a few days behind in my lesson plan.

It's kind of tough - I like to think I can keep doing this on a part time basis for awhile, then maybe work it into full time in two or three years and retire from my day job. But it's a state university, and budgets are tight - and of course since this state is in the grips of (ptui) Republicans (blah) they won't raise taxes to support higher education. So there are fewer students, which means fewer classes, which means less need for an adjunct professor. (Even though I do a better job than the woman who teaches this class during the day!)

For some crazy reason I signed up for two - count em two - classes for this fall. Means I will be on campus four nights a week, 8 to 10 on Monday and Wednesday, and 7 to 9 on Tuesday and Thursday. But the cash will be nice!

Plus I've been working hard this week to get everything in place in advance of the class - unlike last time when I had to create it as I went along through the summer. And hopefully this will allow me to do a better job too.

This is terminally dry stuff - have to find a way to make it more interesting as we go along this semester.

Okay, gonna try this new thing.

I am a new college professor, part time for now, just completed my first semester of student instruction.

Just wanted a place to write down my experiences.