the most in over a year

Yesterday evening, I swam 36 lengths, or a half mile, slowly with breaks over 30 minutes. But this was the most swimming I'd done in at least a year, nearly tripling my largest lap number of the summer, and so it makes me certain I'll be swimming a slow mile again soon.

So forget any aforementioned failure. I'm a big success.

In other news, I've seen Mark Edmundson's name popping up in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times, and I wanted to mention that his memoir Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference was also a book I'd read that led me to write my own version of teaching although my setting, of course, would be the adjunct scene of urban higher education.

Like some of my all-time favorites, Edmundson's memoir was one I chanced upon while browsing in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, and I enjoyed his writing about a favorite twelfth-grade instructor, a passionate fellow who dared Mark and his classmates to resist conformity (but soon after that year ditched teaching for law school). It was a nice complement to Boston Public and the testimony of various friends and family members caught up in the K-to-12 teaching life as well as Felicity and my own teaching and tutoring schedule. With television and work, what else could I need?

Following up on the coincidence angle, it was of course Wes-MOOC President Michael S. Roth who wrote The New York Times review of Edmundson's book.