TEACHING UPDATE

Well, my second class is over.  I talked more or less non-stop for two and a half hours.  I keep telling the students that they should interrupt me with comments, objections, and questions, but they rarely do.  I wonder why that is.  :)  The students are very bright and lively  -- maybe the tsunami of words issuing from my mouth has just submerged them. 

Next Wednesday, the reading assignment is The Communist Manifesto.  I considered bringing in a tape recorder and playing the Internationale, but thought better of it.  No pickets and demonstrations against the class yet.  I am rather disappointed.  Maybe it is because Caldwell Hall is the most  handicap-inaccessible building I have ever seen.  Geoff Sayre-McCord, the former Chair, told me that it is the second oldest building on campus, and was once a surgery!  I have listened carefully but cannot hear the screams of former patients.

The UNC Philosophy Department is the only Philosophy department I have encountered that is rather well-endowed.  An old-time professor, Horace Williams, left it title to some land that became very valuable as Chapel Hill grew [I hope I have this right], and when the University sold the land, the Department came into a bundle.  One consequence is that the lounge has the fanciest coffee maker I have ever seen, and the coffee is free! 

I now have a working parking permit that gets me into a nearby garage.  To keep the fee manageable, I paid for it to work only on Wednesdays, when my class meets.  If I want to go to school on another day, I am on my own.  I really enjoy being back in harness.  Because of my long sojourn in the UMass Afro-American Studies Department, this is actually the first real philosophy course I have taught in twenty-three years [and "Karl Marx's Critique of Capitalism" is not exactly an orthodox philosophy course.]  I figure it is like riding a bicycle.