Cannon Beach, Oregon

There is a slant, silver light on the Oregon coast that is like no light I have ever seen anywhere else. I told myself I wasn't going to blip a haystack picture today. But guess what? I fell in love with the gray light and the swirls of silver water in front of the haystack. So I'm blipping a haystack picture. Sometimes my word is not worth the breath it takes me to voice it. A few more beach pictures are here.

While I was strolling the beach, I ran into a gang of madcap college students doing a leadership exercise: working in small groups, creating sandcastles on the theme "Portlandia," with the motto, "Put a bird on it." Both phrases are taken from a self-mocking TV comedy about Portland. The kids were gorgeous, and I fell in love with them over and over. It almost made me miss being a university professor.

But then I remembered that if I were a university professor, I'd be in charge; I'd be responsible; I'd have to grade their papers; I'd have to create a final exam and then grade that and turn in my grades the day after the exam. I'd have to have created a syllabus last year, and a course description for the catalog, and the Dean would have questioned the leadership exercise that involved taking the class to Cannon Beach, so I would have had to justify that. The Department Head (that would be me) would have needed to justify the expenditure on that field trip, and there would have been the insurance to consider.

So I got over missing being a university professor really quickly.