Dumb As A Box of Rocks

So Wifey and I went to the U last night, for the inagural lecture for the newly created Center for the Humanities. In another example of UM being a much smarter college now than it was when I attended, they've started this Center and asked leading scholars to come and teach and lecture to the public.

About 200 showed up to hear Marjorie Garber speak about Shakespeare and Modern Society. She's a Harvard Professor, and "public intellectual." She was so brilliant, that I sat there feeling like an imbecile. She has recall of lines from Classic Literature the way I have recall of lines from "Animal House." She speaks so fluidly and poignantly --it was something to behold.

Her point is that Shakespeare shapes all of the Humanities, and our time shapes our understanding of Shakespeare. She also has an encyclopedic grasp of modern culture, and she weaves her examples with current films alongside of Dante.

A few audience members asked her some tough questions, like whether Shakespeare was impacted by Classic Greek plays like "Oedipus," and she knew, from her research, that any Greek study done in Elizabethan England would have been in Latin, since the Greeks were just being rediscovered, etc...

I went home and Googled her, and it turns out she grew up on Long Island, loving literature. But, while I read poems and stories in order to impress girls, she did stuff like read all of the footnoted materials in Eliot's "Wasteland." She said she loved to read, and later learned that it was called "scholarship."

Turns out she was probably trying to impress girls, too, since she's a well known bisexual, who has written scholarly articles about various forms of sexuality, too.


Still --she was just so brilliant, it was a privilege to hear her speak.

I guess I've always been an academic groupie. My father prized education and intellect, and I'm completely his son.

My partner Paul, though he is loathe to admit is, is impressed by wealth. When he's around someone very rich, his whole demeanor changes --he puffs out his chest, and measures his words.

Money is grand, of course, but like the country song says, that don't impress me much. In the news lately, South Florida's latest rich big shot, a Lauderdale lawyer named Rothstein, who owned fleets of Bentleys, and streets of million dollar houses, is being exposed as a crook and a fraud, while just weeks ago, he was lauded as a benefactor of politians and charities.

Somehow, I don't think the impressiveness of Professor Garber will fade, and I intend to at least read some of her books.