Re: [crewrt-l] my weekend

["Russ Kesler" <kesler@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>]

I've been grading freshman composition papers this weekend--a personal
essay.  And it's been the usual stories of automobile accidents, friends
killed, parents divorcing, mothers dead of breast cancer at 40, fathers
dead of heart attacks at 35.  This time, though the drudgery of grading 55
papers in a weekend was still there, the stories seemed fresh, the
students writing with some new awareness of a larger context in which
these events have unfolded in their young lives.  Or perhaps I'm possessed
of a new awareness as I've been reading them.  The stories they're telling
are as important, to them, as are the terrible stories of individual
tragedy that have dominated the news of late.  The young woman who held
her father's hand as they unplugged the life support has a hole in her
life that is not diminished, or made easier, by what has happened in NY
and DC.  This isn't news, of course. But it has helped me remember that
lives slip away one at a time, even when thousands die at once.

Russ