Particular

Soot: The fine black particles, chiefly composed of carbon, produced by incomplete combustion of coal, oil, wood, or other fuels.

Six-family apartment building about one block away from home burned through and through this afternoon while I was on the hill sitting, observing the diss defense of a friend and colleague in the CCR program.  The defense was a success(!); the apartments, ablaze.  On the walk home, in the settling of smoky odor, I strolled through the park. D. and Ph. shared all the fuzzy details, but it was clear enough from the blocked street, the piles of rubbish on the sidewalk and the smell.  The odor expressed a version of the event, storied the afternoon in the neighborhood.  Soot as fading, residual document.  And nobody was hurt, as far as we know.

An interruption and a dilemma! Home from an excursion to Blockbuster video--Closer and The Incredibles, which included a stop at the grocer for a package of buns and a six-pack of orange-flavored malt liquor.  But it turns out that we don't have the Manwich that was supposed to switch the browned burger into the dinner-stuff.  So?  I suggested to D. that we could drop in a can of soup.  That's the sure-fire recipe I remember from childhood: any-flavor can o' soup, ground beef, on bread.  Won't see it on Iron Chef, but in a pinch....

No good, that idea.  Going with H. Helper instead.  A solution, at least.  I have quite a list of to-dos keeping me active through Monday afternoon.  Among them: 1. read and comment on 14 drafts of research projects from 205ers, 2. read several sections of Barbara Rogoff's Apprenticeship in Thinking for 720, 3. draft 4-5 pages of 711 project, 4. revisit draft of project for 611, 5. write a few paragraphs of critique of method(ology), taking J.'s work on alongside White, Certau, 6.  think about N.I. Painter and Robert Connors for a minute, 7. revisions of a short essay for 720, 8. develop three-page bibliography proposal for 720.  Three solid days should get me close.  Ah, and we've got tickets to hear Cornell West talk in Hendricks Chapel on campus tomorrow afternoon.