meep! i'm getting old. i completely forgot what i started the last entry for and went off on donoghue and watson. well. what i wanted to tell people about was this: after watson, barbara lewalski read from paradise lost - adam and eve before the fall - followed by teskey who read from spenser (naturally!) he picked the house of busirane - i think he quite relished describing to the audience amoret with her heart carved out and bloody. how that should be particularly appropriate for a welcome reception or to the theme of experience and innocence i am sure i don't know, unless it's to bother the heck out of everyone. right. chaucer, milton and spenser - the big men, practically the heads of houses of the literary mafia of english departments - pay up, take the big author classes or forfeit the respect and protection of the department - then up gets james simpson, the fourth consecutive faculty member from the med-ren period. dante, you think, maybe shakespeare? oh no. straight through the pomposity! "i will read a poem," he said, "about an overweight teddy bear." and before the laughter has settled he had begun reciting milne. everyone fell off their chairs, i can tell you!