Settle Your Sources

In Which the Hartley Household visits Kolkata and relates Tales to Amaze and Astound the Easily Amused

Name:
Location: Mount Holyoke College

Twitter: @JHeartsEcon

Friday, September 08, 2006

Livestock Report [Jim]

On my way from the school to the metro station yesterday, I ran into a herd of goats. Well, more properly, the herd of goats ran into me. I was strolling down the sidewalk, when along came this herd of goats, with a goatherd, down the very same sidewalk on the very same day. I thought, “Hey! Is this my problem? Is this my fault?” Well, OK I didn’t really think that, but I like that song (actually, the album on which said song is found is easily one of the finest albums ever recorded). Anyway, the goats and I are headed for a showdown on this sidewalk. It’s one of those sidewalks with a guard rail to stop pedestrians from getting out of the way of things like herds of goats. So, I don’t get out of the way and the goats just smashed their way on past me.

Now, lest you get the wrong idea, my workplace in not in a rural area at all—it is right in the middle of the city. As noted earlier, I believe there is a slaughterhouse nearby. As a result, I don’t think the Goats’ blog will have a report of their encounter with me. Requiescant In Pace.

Meeting News:
1. I had a chat with an ex-Cabinet Official the other day. Pratap Chandra Chunder was the Minister of Education and Social Welfare from 1977 to 1979, the brief hiatus in one-party rule in this country during the 1970s. He is currently the President of the Institute at which I am working and was over at the school for the inauguration of the Retail Management program. Quite an amazing guy.
2. I had a discussion with a local businessman who is planning to use some of his (Vast) wealth to start a women’s college in West Bengal. I naturally enough offered Mount Holyoke’s assistance. The Powers That Be at Mount Holyoke are unaware of my kind offer of unspecified assistance—do I need to notify anyone?
3. One of the gentlemen organizing the Commonwealth Games of 2010, which will be held in India, came to the Institute to talk about preparations for the Games. It turns out they are having a problem with financing the operations. I asked why they didn’t get Corporate Sponsorship since that seems to work so well for all the other such events around the world—you call up Coca-Cola, and they build a new stadium and get lots of advertising every time the stadium is mentioned. He said that Indian Business won’t sponsor sporting events. I am skeptical, to say the least, but there isn’t much I can do to find out if he is right.

Other Notes:
1. We are toying with the idea of a visit to Darjeeling in early October.

2. Last Saturday, I took the young’ins down to the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum. (Janet was not feeling well (nothing major), otherwise she would have joined us on this jaunt.) The Museum is a short walk from our apartment. It is a Science Museum—a very interesting mixture of vintage 1950s exhibits, some of which still work, and quite modern, computerized exhibits, which were extremely good. Major Home School potential there…

3. George asks if I now wear a coat and tie given the general respect the students show to professors here. As some of you know, I feel a certain degree of guilt for not wearing a coat and tie to work each day—not so much guilt that I actually dress better than your average refugee, but some guilt nonetheless. Anyway, still no coat and tie, but fortunately, nobody here wears a coat and tie—it’s far too humid. I do still pace endlessly in lecture, which is a bit of a problem in one classroom on which the professor stands on a box about a foot and a half high and only 10 or so feet wide—some day I am going to walk right off the edge.

4. The regular season for fantasy baseball ended on Sunday—I came in Second. My team finished strong (10 weeks without a loss), but not strong enough to pass up Craig’s surging team. Curses. Anyway, I did get a bye in the first round of the playoffs. I like my chances. Then again, I am also sure the Raiders will win the Super Bowl this year.

5. Football season officially started at something like 5:30 AM today. I am quite happy.

6. We have mail! After being in this apartment for a month, having received no mail, we finally began to wonder if there was a mailbox somewhere. Sure enough, we had a mailbox, but no key. But a quick call to the Mittras and the key arrived this morning, and mail has come into our life. A letter for Clara from Carol (thanks Carol!) and a bill for us for the phone and internet and some, yes, junk mail.

7. The aforementioned album is Paul Simon’s Graceland.

Book Reports:
1. Trollope: Barchester Towers. Volume 2 in the Barsetshire series. Even better than the first volume. Mr. Slope was a wonderfully perfect villain.

2. Wodehouse, Ukridge. You can never, and I mean never, go wrong reading Wodehouse. Ukridge isn’t one of his best creations, but he really grew on me as the book went on.

3. Hammett, TheGlass Key. Not as good as the two earlier Hammett stories I read, but still fairly good—though I have no idea what the title was supposed to mean, and it isn’t worth the bother to puzzle it out. The style was again suited to the main character—the slight variations between his novels have started to intrigue me.

4. Shakespeare, Hamlet. I gave a lecture on Hamlet today in my Western Civ class, which was a good excuse to reread the play. I have read Hamlet more than any other single book (unless one counts individual books in the Bible as books unto themselves—I have read Romans, for example, more times than I have read Hamlet, but is Romans a book or a chapter in a book? Anyway, I haven’t read Numbers or Ezra or Joel, for example, as many times as I have read Hamlet.) Truly an incredible play, but you already knew that.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

See also: A man walks down the street/ It's a street in a strange world/ Maybe it's the Third World/ Maybe it's his [second] time around/ He doesn't speak the language [well]/ He holds [some] currency/ He is a foreign man

It would be cool if Darjeeling had some sort of really famous export, something that all the world had heard of. But, alas. Probably not worth a visit.

10:52 AM PDT  

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