Why professorial? Because I got to guest-teach Carol Guess's super-smart students, who looked like this... 
After class and office hours, we headed over to a room containing a lab sink and some burners... 
...which made me feel like I should deliver a chemistry lesson. I stuck to the original plan, though, and gave a reading. The night before my reading, Carol, Elizabeth, and I--and a huge turnout of people from Bellingham--went to see Brenda Miller read from her brand new book of essays Blessing of the Animals. If you get a chance to do the same, you should go. As the title suggests, the collection is largely about animals, such as Callie, pictured here, licking her lips, perhaps at the thought of listening to braided essays that mention dogs:
Thanks to Carol and Elizabeth for being stellar hosts for the second time in a month, to Carol for taking me with her to Bikram, to Carol's students for having so many thoughts about literature, and to everybody who came to the reading. I'd say more, but I have to go get on a plane. Because like a drifter, I was born to walk alone. You know how it is.
