The Dry As Dust Bowl
Howdy Jewsters,
Well, it's been another long week as an Academic Oakie. Traveling the highways and byways of Eastern, Massachusetts--from UMass Lowell to Emerson College to the New England Institute of Art--while singing rousing workers' tunes (like "The Internationale" and "Take This Job And Shove It"), I've decided this land truly is your land and my land too. Unfortunately, it's filled with strip malls and traffic jams and angry Bostonians giving you the finger. Not exactly what Woody G. had in mind. But then again, who would have had this in mind? A madman? A computer? A city planner with a hatred of urbanites?
In any case, I'm raring up for vacation, giving thanks that the big Thanksgiving holiday is all but upon us with its offer of resting one's weary head on the chopping block of tryptophan and sleep.
But wait, no tryptophan tripping for me. I'm a veggie-kinda-man, not a full-blown vegan with a hatred of eggs and cream, but enough of the not-meat-eating kind that I don't foresee any Big Birds appearing on my plate. More like a tofu mound shaped in the visage of Oscar the Grouch. You know, the one who lives in a garbage can. Dumpster diving has never looked so appealing as from the sidelines of the new Depression when the turkeys will all come home to roost.
Until then, though, I've still got some work to get done. Papers in all five classes are accumulating at a rate unheard of in modern times. I love my classes and my students (well, most of them, at least) and I'm not saying that the colleges where I teach are dry or boring. No academic Dry-As-Dust Bowl here. But I will say that it's not exactly easy to keep up when the papers keep coming in like mail, like circulars, like spam of all kinds, and needing to be waded through again and again.
No wonder our dear friends at the postal service have a tendency to get a bit jumpy at times.
Now, what does all of this have to do with JewPunk you might ask? Not much really, I'll admit. And yet, I want to explain to you why I've been out of commission for a bit and why there has yet to appear an update on my recent Berlin trip. It's trans-America--or at least trans-eastern-Mass--time, so there's no time for nostalgic glances back at Cold War sites, Holocaust memorials and new buildings that have replaced the bombed out old ones. No, no time for that. But in good time, don't worry, I'll get to it, in all its wonky glory.
So, until then, sleep tight ya bastahds!
Yours,
Holden Caulfield Salinger
P.S. For anyone interested in reading up on the Jewish origins of the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, be sure to check out page 31 of "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's" (which I hear through the grapevine is a pretty darn good read!)
Well, it's been another long week as an Academic Oakie. Traveling the highways and byways of Eastern, Massachusetts--from UMass Lowell to Emerson College to the New England Institute of Art--while singing rousing workers' tunes (like "The Internationale" and "Take This Job And Shove It"), I've decided this land truly is your land and my land too. Unfortunately, it's filled with strip malls and traffic jams and angry Bostonians giving you the finger. Not exactly what Woody G. had in mind. But then again, who would have had this in mind? A madman? A computer? A city planner with a hatred of urbanites?
In any case, I'm raring up for vacation, giving thanks that the big Thanksgiving holiday is all but upon us with its offer of resting one's weary head on the chopping block of tryptophan and sleep.
But wait, no tryptophan tripping for me. I'm a veggie-kinda-man, not a full-blown vegan with a hatred of eggs and cream, but enough of the not-meat-eating kind that I don't foresee any Big Birds appearing on my plate. More like a tofu mound shaped in the visage of Oscar the Grouch. You know, the one who lives in a garbage can. Dumpster diving has never looked so appealing as from the sidelines of the new Depression when the turkeys will all come home to roost.
Until then, though, I've still got some work to get done. Papers in all five classes are accumulating at a rate unheard of in modern times. I love my classes and my students (well, most of them, at least) and I'm not saying that the colleges where I teach are dry or boring. No academic Dry-As-Dust Bowl here. But I will say that it's not exactly easy to keep up when the papers keep coming in like mail, like circulars, like spam of all kinds, and needing to be waded through again and again.
No wonder our dear friends at the postal service have a tendency to get a bit jumpy at times.
Now, what does all of this have to do with JewPunk you might ask? Not much really, I'll admit. And yet, I want to explain to you why I've been out of commission for a bit and why there has yet to appear an update on my recent Berlin trip. It's trans-America--or at least trans-eastern-Mass--time, so there's no time for nostalgic glances back at Cold War sites, Holocaust memorials and new buildings that have replaced the bombed out old ones. No, no time for that. But in good time, don't worry, I'll get to it, in all its wonky glory.
So, until then, sleep tight ya bastahds!
Yours,
Holden Caulfield Salinger
P.S. For anyone interested in reading up on the Jewish origins of the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, be sure to check out page 31 of "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's" (which I hear through the grapevine is a pretty darn good read!)
posted by G-D at
2:34 PM
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