In the tale, Maui Muri and the Sun, time is moving too fast for people to live and work. In the stories, Black Ice; Bond Paper; and Missing Student; time seems to slow down or speed up in unpredictable ways.
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Winter break had ended. I was returning to the University of Wisconsin where I was a graduate student studying dance and kinesiology. I’d bought a used Oldsmobile from a friend of my parents and was accompanied by a guy I hardly knew, a graduate student who needed a ride back to the university and was willing to share driving and the cost of gas.
In 1968, masters’ theses had to be typed on a typewriter with carbons to make copies. To correct mistakes, one had to use whiteout, then type in the correction and hope it looked like there’d been no error—a tedious process at best. I wasn’t a good enough typist to type my thesis so I hired one. I picked up the copies, signed my name, and drove to the University of Delaware Graduate School Office a few hours before the noon deadline.
In 1987 I was the lead faculty member of a first-year honors course titled “Interdisciplinary Arts.” We used Othello as the subject, looking at the play by Shakespeare, the opera by Verdi, “The Moor’s Pavane,” a dance by José Limón, and various paintings based on the story. The capstone event was a trip to New York City.
As part of the pre-trip planning students were asked to sign an agreement that they would stay with the group. If they needed to use a bathroom, eat or leave the group for any reason, they would let a faculty member know. Maui Muri noticed that no matter how hard people worked they never had enough daylight to finish their tasks. The Sun-God, Ra, moved too quickly across the sky. He decided he needed to find a way to make Ra move more slowly.
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February 2025
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