Visit from a Ghost

Exhausted this morning because dogs going crazy all night with a particularly scary thunderstorm. So half asleep in the shower this morning, which may explain why I was visited by the ghost of one of my old professors, who told me I was the only person left with a copy of class notes from his lectures, and would I please publish them because he hadn't had a chance to get his theory out to the public before passing over. And I thought, well, that's odd, I'm being visited by a ghost in the shower and it's not even freaking me out. And he said, well, it's not the shower so much as you're asleep right now. And I said, 'right' and woke up, finished showering, and had breakfast.

Finding it odd that I should think of this professor some 43 years since I last spoke to him--well, not counting in the shower this morning. Perhaps it's because I am finishing up on the novel I started the same time I was taking his course; or perhaps my subconscious trying to distract me from working on my novel yet again, by suggesting this other project; or perhaps it's because I'm coming up on the scene in the town square where I had originally envisaged placing a statue to said professor, but that version had never made it to paper; or, you know, perhaps it was his ghost asking me to publish his notes. And he's right, I DO still have a copy of those notes, even after all these years. His course had a profound influence on my thinking from then on, even more than my mentor Dr. Pannu, because his theory covered EVERYTHING, not just my specialization(s). So it is a little tempting.

I am aware, for example, that John Dewey, the great American philosopher and educator, founder of the progressive movement in education and politics, never actually wrote any books--they were compiled by his graduate students who pooled their class notes to come up with a coherent copy. So it's not without precedent that one's student writes up one's book. So I am a little tempted. But am going to finish the novel first, damn it.

Then we'll see.