and now back to our regularly scheduled programming

So ... back to school.

and once again ... a word from our sponsors:

I'm taking a class with Sarah Levine, one of the more popular professors at the art institute. Her classes fill up fast and are hard to come by, it was luck that there was an opening and I slid in. It's hard to tell this early, but I think she's worth the hype:


I'm also taking a class titiled "Travel Writing" The professor is Anne Calcagno. She is quite enthusiastic, which is good because this is an evening class, and regardless of how exciting the material, it's hard to pay attention when you are sitting in a classroom at 8pm.


And this semester I have two graduate advisors. The first is Mary Cross, who I took a class with last semester. She's a poet, essayist, fiction writer and also an enthusiastic professor. Plus, she digs my work. So that helps.

And I am doing advising with Beth Nugent. She's another professor that is extremely popular and I'd heard great things about her. She seems to really dive into your work and is really invested in advising her students. When I left our advising session I almost felt like I just left a therapy session and I was feeling motivated to get some writing done.

Remembering an old friend and co-worker

Patrick Sean Murphy

Sometimes, you learn the most about someone from the silence. From what people who knew them best do not say. With Patrick Sean Murphy, they don"t talk about his job much, as successful as he was.

No, those closest to him emphasize other pieces of his life. Because he did. They all say he had three loves: his family, basketball and fishing.

Summer weekends at the family cottage in Beach Haven, N.J., would find Mr. Murphy, 36, fishing on the 20-footer named Nothin" But Net. Because, though only 5- foot-9, he could drop a basketball into a net without hitting the rim.

Mr. Murphy, a vice president at Marsh & McLennan, formed basketball leagues. He was a regular at Knicks games. He even taught his daughter, Maggie, only 2 years old, to dribble (with both hands).

But he wasn"t dogmatic. His son, Sean, 4, somehow wasn"t charmed by basketball, so father and son would find projects. They"d fix things around the house in Millburn, N.J. They"d search Internet sites for information about trucks, Sean"s passion, and Mr. Murphy would bookmark them.

"He enjoyed his success," said his wife, Vera. "But Patrick had a motto. He"d say he worked to live. He didn"t live to work."

(Copyright (c) 2001 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission.)