A Buzzing Blooming Confusion

That title started out as something closer to “Busy, Beautiful Montana” but took a decidedly Jamesian turn well before the typing began.

Some random notes on life of late. I completed a 26.7 mile week last week with four runs: 5, 4.3, 4.3, and 13.1 miles respectively. Now I’m on a four day break.

I suppose tomorrow I’ll get started on the next increment, something like 6.5, 5, 5, and 15 miles. Eesh. The half-marathon (13.1 m) kicked my butt; I can only imagine what 15 will do. But then as we know, it’s all conditioning. I condition my body to run insane distances, and by golly, it will. The constraints of reality might kick in in terms of an injury, but I’m doing fine so far.

Pali studies are going great. I’m now about 40 pages into my book and can easily say intelligent things like:

Darakaa adarena janakaya odanam pujenti = Children offer rice to the father with care.

Kassako manche supati = The farmer sleeps in the bed.

And so on. After a while I’m sure I’ll reach the official 1st grade reading level. ‘Till then, sweet dreams, farmer.

Thesis work is there, up in my head, ready to be done. When exactly that’ll happen I’m not sure, but soon. I’m currently working on a post and some readings on moral realism, trying to figure out why people would think Buddhism is not morally realistic (more on that in a coming post). Then some writing must be done.

Then reading for China (we have a bibliography of suggested readings that I have yet to dive into).

But first: I’m taking an ethics teaching course called TASET: Theory and Skills of Ethics Teaching with an outstanding professor, Deni Elliott. She founded the Ethics Center here at UM before taking an endowed Chair position in Florida but still lives here as much as she can (for obvious reasons). And pretty much every year she teaches this amazing course, mostly to ethics professors who come from around the country to develop new skills, but also to professional ethics officers and grad students who deal with issues in teaching ethics. And this year I finally managed to wriggle my way in.