[FRIAM] Natures_Queer_Performativity_the_authori.pdf

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

A great story.  Thank you Jon.   

Are we in danger of confusing here, irrationality with rationality with
occasional random jumps.  Your story is only intelligible if you understand
the participants as rational.  

n

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2021 10:44 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Natures_Queer_Performativity_the_authori.pdf

At times, I miss living near Reed. Sometime in my twenties, my friends Ralf
and Allison and I rented a car and drove to Columbus Ohio where we heard
that John Griggs Thompson was to speak. None of us felt like springing for a
hotel room and decided instead to drink coffee and eat donuts at Buckeye
Donuts until the lecture the next morning. The donut shop was cramped and
teeming with students and Columbus's homeless.
The three of us sat in the window and watched the falling snow. Allision and
I were learning to tie Celtic knots and Ralf sat coloring and writing poetry
on index cards.

A few feet away from us, a budding engineering student attempted to spit
game with another student. The former, male and typical, tried his best to
impress the young woman with the status and money that he would one day have
as a working engineer. We watched the young woman roll her eyes, cooly
flirt, and troll the oblivious boy with anti-rationalist rhetoric.
At some point she excused herself, she would need to attend a class the next
morning. As she squeezed by us, between the swiveling diner stools, Ralf
caught her arm, looked into her eyes, and said, "Would you care to hear a
poem about compost tea"?

That night, the three of us were invited back to this young woman's house.
Her absent parents were both ceramicists and it showed. Every possible
spandrel was decorated with cup handles, clay faces, and other abstract
forms. The next morning we drank coffee in her kitchen and read the sad news
that John Griggs Thompson's lecture would be canceled due to his poor
health.

The whole affair struck me as being a sort of anti-Aesopian fable.

One where, if I needed a moral it would be that one can get more honey with
a poem, one involving compost tea.

or alternatively, that youth is a donut to be eaten on the spot.



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