Okay, so I'm sleepy and sitting at the Haymarket Cafe in Northampton, MA (hereafter, NoHo). I'm listening to the wonderful album We Brave Bee Stings and All by Thao - an album you all should go out and buy right now if you have any appreciation at all for the good things in life - and am just about to head back to The Submarine (aka my NoHo apartment; the nickname will be explained in graphic detail shortly) and read a little about the rise of American militarism before going to bed.
But I've been threatening to do this blog thing for a while now, and as luck would have it the mood struck tonight and I've gone and done it, so I want to get this inaugural post out of the way before I hit the sack. The premise is this: I'm in the Pioneer Valley region of Western Massachusetts on a lovely postdoc fellowship at one of the local colleges. The fellowship comes with very few strings attached - my primary obligation is to show up for lunch on Thursdays - and I therefore have plenty of time to do things like explore the area, get to know its inhabitants, buy its organic vegetables, and blog about it all. I'm also supposed to be writing a book and finding a job, but that part will more or less take care of itself. My main hope here is to try to convey, in vivid words and images, what it's like to live here in the Happy Valley (so named for a variety of reasons, most of which will become clear very soon), and also to give some taste of what a person's life can become when he has no professional obligations (apart, as previously mentioned, from eating lunch on Thursday - and did I mention lunch is paid for? But only on Thursday) and very few personal ones. Well, that last part isn't entirely true. But enough.
Stay tuned. The next post will probably be interesting.
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4 comments:
Thursday lunch? I'll one better. All I had to show up at at G'O'K was a tri-weekly "tea." Oh man, those were the days. Now I am professionally obligated to "show up" and "teach" 6 75-minute sessions a week. Oh yeah--I'm supposed to be writing a book too ;).
Can't wait to read more about the Happy Valley.
xoxo.
Good to hear that Thao album is great. I might have to go pick it up today. She just played here and I couldn't make it and it made me sad.
No book here, but there are some articles I'm ignoring. And the pesky 4 75-minute sessions and the much-longer, when-I'm-sleepy 180 minutes in the evening, once a week. So you aren't going to get much pity here! :)
If I didn't love you I'd hate you :) The other Jen and I seem to have much in common besides supremely chic first names, including work schedules, except that I work 10 50 minute sessions 2 75 minute sessions 1 2 hour session 6 hours of office hours, committee work and tutoring international students. So I win. Or wait. I think I might lose. You win. Frick!! I get free donuts on Friday though and I have a cute car :) Shit that's pathetic.
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