If they only had hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship classes, a story about 
Reed campus life could make for a good Netflix cult story.   Like the St. Johns 
kids.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2021 9:44 AM
To: [email protected]
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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