Hubcap Diamond Star Halo

Practicum day today. Veronica and I went over to the Undergraduate Library to teach a drop-in class on Microsoft Excel. It went well -- I had to go and help the students if they raised their hands. It was really elementary. There was one woman who showed up five minutes before the class was supposed to end, and I was doing my best to catch her up. She was an older woman (older than my parents), and apparently from Africa. When we finally had to leave, she asked me if I would be willing to do one-on-one tutorials with her, and my response almost was, "Well, how much money are we talking about?" But then I just said no, and felt bad.

Afterwards, we descended into the catacombs beneath the UGL, to go to where library gifts go to die. This is the closest I've ever come to feeling like I was in that final warehouse scene in Indiana Jones -- at first glance, I couldn't really see any end to it. I will have to sort through the gifts Veronica has received for the education collection. Retiring professors apparently just box up their books from their office and "gift" (read: dump) them to the library. Only about 20% of the books are expected to ever make it into the library system, but it takes a fairly significant amount of work to winnow it down. Huzzah.

Apparently, someone was attacked in the stairwell of Purdy-Kresge Library (the graduate library, where I'm doing my practicum), so security is a concern. I didn't really ask about it, but it sounded like the attacker wasn't a student, but rather just a member of the community. One of the problems with Wayne State -- not even the university, but Detroit as a whole -- is that in the nineties, former governor John Engler closed a lot (most? all?) of the state mental hospitals in Michigan. There are thus quite a few homeless people who linger around the university campus, and who spend their days in the libraries, or in Detroit Public Library, which is across the street. Usually they behave themselves, simply because they don't want to be kicked out. But then occaionally they don't. I have had an unpleasant encounter myself, complete with veiled sexual threats. Not in the library, just on campus. So security is an issue, although Veronica pointed out that there isn't a whole lot that can be done, aside from instituting security measures that there's no money for.

Haven't been reading any novels lately, but rather doing the flipping between short stories thing. I read the first Ratbastards chapbook. Mr. Barzak's contribution was of the quality I would expect, as was Kristin Livdahl's "Even a Worm Will Turn." My favorite story, though, was Barth Anderson's "The Psalm of Big Galahad". It was a fabulous mix of science fiction and Malory. I'm not even quite sure that I understand it, but I know I love it, regardless. I also have been reading the stories in "Say... Why aren't we Crying?" Janet Chui's short story, "Black Fish", was wonderful. It had a fantastic element to it, but it didn't belabor it.

Song: T. Rex: "Bang a Gong (Get it On)"; one of the sexiest pop songs, ever, with one of my favorite lyrics: "Well, you're built like a car, you got a hubcap-diamond-star halo, you're dirty sweet and you're my girl." That halo bit is poetry, managing to marry the mundane to the holy, artifice to nature to supernature, earthly to cosmic, all in the service of sex. The fact that it's an elaboration of comparing his woman to a car -- not a comparison I would be overly thrilled by -- is just perfect.