Saturday, August 9, 2008

Arrival in Vermont


Second day at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, and it's cold! Here I packed nothing but tee-shirts and shorts and insisted on a fan in my room (dorms are not air conditioned) because it was supposed to be hot, and it's been raining and cold.

Not too much has changed in the 19 years I've been gone. Same beautiful town, dorms are in Dewey Hall instead of Noble, and the food is infinitely better.

Baron Wormser will, I think, turn out to be a good instructor. He said last night we weren't going to follow the typical Iowa model but would be using a more Socratic method, and that another classmate would read our poems out loud -- we wouldn't be reading our own work. I think these are excellent ideas and I'm looking forward to it.

Called L last night -- she got into the house okay and said she stayed about an hour. She said Charli bit her and Nicholas (probably) bit her. I apologized as if they were my children and hadn't been raised to be polite. Lord. She kindly reminded me that she has cockatiels and works as a vet tech and knows perfectly well that birds bite strangers -- that I needn't apologize. She's birdsat for me before, so she isn't exactly a stranger, but I'm sure they also remember her from the vet's.

I'm planning to sneak off after lunch, get a cab, and go downtown. They're not serving wine at the evening readings like they used to, and I could use a drink after a full day of this stuff, which means going to the state-operated liquor store. I'll miss a couple of lectures, but they're ones I'm not interested in anyway.

No comments: