Welcome to the first day of class in the 2012-13 school year. Today, we’ll explore angry Germans, a poem about son’s love for his father, and more. Welcome to what I hope is an excellent year!

Poem of the Day

October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father’s embarrassed young man’s face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.

In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.

But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can’t hold my liquor either,
and don’t even know the places to fish?

–Raymond Carver, Photograph of my Father

Sentence of the Day

“Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.” —Edward Abbey

Fascinating Factoid

Germans are angry about their politics, too, as the New York Times notes:

They are called “Wutbürger.” And they have become the bane of every political party in Germany. Loosely translated as “enraged citizen,” the Wutbürger has stepped outside the classical political and parliamentary system by organizing demonstrations and town-hall meetings, protest marches and sit-ins.
“It’s as if the post-1945 consensus of Germans accepting the status quo and the conventional structures of the main political parties is coming to an end,” said Andrea Römmele, a professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. “These new trends should be seen as a strength, not as a threat to democracy,” she added.

Word Power

HYPNOPOMPIC: The drowsy state between being asleep and fully awake.

Example: During Mr. Pogreba’s lecture about logos, pathos, and ethos, most of the class could charitably described as hypnopompic.

Events of Aug 30

•  In 2006, Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate, died.
• In 1836, the city of Houston, Texas was founded.