Three days left until the Old Settlers' Ball, and because I have an unrealistic view of my powers, I have said yes once again to making too many other people's ball dresses. So here I sit, thinking thoughts about what I am going to teach next Fall in terms of design history and criticism, and sewing the bejeebers out of yards and yards of taffeta. The balanced life is the life we strive for. Histories and hierarchies, who did what when-- that's one side of the story. The other-- that unheralded long stitch of repeated experience that snicks through life like a machine needle, the continuing tale that folds in upon itself, that starts over and ends and starts over-- the sea swell of the unconscious upon which we plant yardsticks and measuring tapes and wonder why they never reach far enough, why they sink down out of sight. How shall I teach that?