Been awhile. I'm recovering from severe sciatica - not being able to sit for any length of time is playing havoc with the writing part of my day. But I have caught up with all the stuff saved on DVR, the latest episodes of the Sopranos, and when this is done, I am tackling The Tudors on On Demand. Life in the 21st century.
Life in the 20th century, circa 1963, via a letter from my St. Olaf friend Jan, nearly leaves me gasping for breath. She so wanted me to come to school with her there, and I'm thinking what a good influence she would have been on me - and I'm also thinking that, had my parents been able to afford it - would I actually have gone and if I had, would I have survived? Or would I have run away from there, as I ran from Carthage and from Larry and from all other endeavors that seemed to expect - indeed, to my feverish brain, require - something from me that I felt unable to provide.
Jan seems to believe that I would have been just as excited as she is about her philosophy and literature courses, and I would have been - but I would have been terribly intimidated, as well. She describes an evening out - a "get together." "Party is a horrible word," she says. I'm not certain what she means by that, since she certainly "partied" with the best of them, judging by her other letters. But since this one involved poetry reading and folk singing and discussions in French and German, I guess it was above the rank of party and more on the level of soiree - but she calls it a get-together.
They read from Ferlinghetti, e.e. cummings, some russian poets, and William Carlos Williams, "(Pictures from Breugal), at which we all laughed because he (Williams) would like to be considered no doubt avant garde and all it comes out as is bad poetry."
She ends this 6-page letter, written long-hand on college notebook paper, with a list of the papers and exams she has due almost immediately, followed by a decision to read "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," instead. I'm with her there. But I would very likely have wasted time in a more lowbrow fashion.
She and Larry would have liked each other. I can't think that they ever actually met.
Life in the 20th century, circa 1963, via a letter from my St. Olaf friend Jan, nearly leaves me gasping for breath. She so wanted me to come to school with her there, and I'm thinking what a good influence she would have been on me - and I'm also thinking that, had my parents been able to afford it - would I actually have gone and if I had, would I have survived? Or would I have run away from there, as I ran from Carthage and from Larry and from all other endeavors that seemed to expect - indeed, to my feverish brain, require - something from me that I felt unable to provide.
Jan seems to believe that I would have been just as excited as she is about her philosophy and literature courses, and I would have been - but I would have been terribly intimidated, as well. She describes an evening out - a "get together." "Party is a horrible word," she says. I'm not certain what she means by that, since she certainly "partied" with the best of them, judging by her other letters. But since this one involved poetry reading and folk singing and discussions in French and German, I guess it was above the rank of party and more on the level of soiree - but she calls it a get-together.
They read from Ferlinghetti, e.e. cummings, some russian poets, and William Carlos Williams, "(Pictures from Breugal), at which we all laughed because he (Williams) would like to be considered no doubt avant garde and all it comes out as is bad poetry."
She ends this 6-page letter, written long-hand on college notebook paper, with a list of the papers and exams she has due almost immediately, followed by a decision to read "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," instead. I'm with her there. But I would very likely have wasted time in a more lowbrow fashion.
She and Larry would have liked each other. I can't think that they ever actually met.
