Circles

***Chicago Daily News; June 18, 1965: Patricia Ann Morgan, a model, poses for photographers after she was acquitted by a New York judge of the charge she was wearing indecent shorts in Riverside Park. The judge ruled Miss Morgan's shorts were kind of short but not short enough to violate a Park Department ordinance.***

Why the hell are lawnmowers so loud? I guess a lawnmower's response might be, why the hell are you sitting in your backyard with a computer on your lap, geek? Anyway . . .

When I bike to work, which makes my mind and body feel oh so yummy, my path takes me through the University of Minnesota campus. It's my favorite part of the ride, at least during the school year. Lots of traffic and tight riding, perfect for the urban explorer idiot. So the point here is, on my ride home from work today, it was clear that this was little freshman show up and stuff all your crap into your stinky dorm day, welcome to your new home dork day. Upon realizing this, which really wasn't so much the fault of the silly new students in their senior high wear as much as that of their punch-drunk parents' wicked driving, my thoughts turned to circles. Then, because I'm strange, they turned to U of M President Bob Bruininks, whose son I went to Sweden with while we were in grad school though that has nothing to do with anything I am typing here, and I wondered if this first day of fall freshman madness made him feel like he was riding a train at the zoo--you know, it just goes in circles, you pass the same flippin' stops over and over, time after time if you stay onboard. Bruininks has been president for the better part of a decade, and I wondered whether today triggered thoughts of time flying by in cycles of one year, four years, something like that. Me, I don't like circles. I prefer to jump off trains.

Time is a weird thing, so I relate rather well to it. In the relative grand scheme of things I won't, and neither will you, be around much longer. Yet I, maybe it's my spirit, generally feel immortal, which of course in reality makes no sense and entirely contradicts what I admitted in the previous sentence. So, the photo and caption here, 44 years old, certainly offer an illustration of how times have changed, circles replaced by points no one of the past would have expected. People are comparitively naked now days when it comes to shorts, except for basketball players. A short, no pun intended, article in the same Daily News edition reported that people on public aid--which I interpreted to mean welfare--could now be given information about birth control with their aid check, but only if they requested the information. I wonder where that law stands today, and I wonder where it will stand tomorrow, when our time is up. Circle or zig-zag? As well, though you think shorts can't possibly get any smaller than today's, 44 years from any day always lurks right around the corner. So shorts, circle or zig-zag? From this day to the year 2053 means 44 more freshman classes, 44 more years of punch-drunk parents on campus. The zoo train, of course, will still stop at the same spots. Circles.