Table Talk

Board meeting at lunch which D had to attend as he is the Facilities Manager and the facilities are being revamped. Then a staff meeting at two, talking about The Renaissance because Sara is doing a show of modern painters who work in that style. Turns out D and I know a lot about the period, mostly through the emergence of printing with moveable type. The show isn't until October (it takes time to get a show together) and D and I are roped into doing a talk. It'll be fun. I surprised myself with my depth of knowledge about certain aspects of the period. Doesn't hurt that I just read the Greenblatt book and the Renaissance is his field. I feel like I just took a study course, actually, I did just take a study course in The Early Renaissance. It must have been forty degrees in town, but I got to the bottom of the hill and there was still snow. The ruts were mud, but I could walk up in the steps I took down, in the median; at this point in rotting snow, where you've stepped previously melts faster. I don't know why, exactly, I have several theories, all of which are probably wrong, but it keeps the question alive, which is the issue. It's a matter of relative temperature and heat still trapped in the ground, or the mud, in your boot treads, darkens spots and they melt faster in sunlight; but it's different, from the beginning of winter, because if you compact snow then, it melts slower. Curious. I drive home slowly, looking for where the black ice will be in the morning. I trust myself, driving through slush and ice, but I don't trust anyone else. If you're driving six miles along a stretch that usually takes six minutes, it take you three more minutes to be safe. Seems like it doesn't deserve a second thought. Of course, I have to think about that. Whether or not it doesn't.