Homeward bound!

Well, almost. By week's end, I should have finished marking papers, submitted grades, packed the bags and started for Illinois. It's been an interesting experience and I am grateful that I had the opportunity. I am happy to announce that Edeline, the woman whose course I came here to oversee during her absence due to pregnancy complications, was safely delivered of a healthy boy. Charles William Trenton Sleigh arrived on May 19, weighing in at a hefty nine pounds, seven ounces. Baby and parents are doing fine. 

There are some things I will miss. I think I have adjusted well to pub grub and the environs. I got the hang, more or less, of the richly varied accents of the students, staff and townsfolk. Still, I am ready to return to the homeland. By plane, of course, not by ship.

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said ..."

A few lines later the poet speaks of "whose heart hath ne'er within him burned." That may just be a lasting reminder of some of the pub grub.