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While it would be untrue to say that I am unimportant, certainly untrue in regards to my family - the most frequent readers of this journal - I can almost certainly say I am unimportant on a large scale or over wide distances. At least, that was until this evening when I got an e-mail from a Mr. Peter Wood, of the National Association of Scholars. Grandma Anne informed me that this was a conservative academic policy think tank, and a quick reference corroborated this. So why should this Mr. Wood be e-mailing me? Well, as chance would have it, he was in the Twin Cities recently and by happenstance was reading the Mac Weekly, our local school paper. It is not known for cutting edge journalism nor for the engaged citizenship one might find in the op-ed section. Certainly, it's not the New York Times, not even the New York Post. Hell, it's not even the Minot Daily News. Still, an article I had written on 'global citizenship' attracted this man's attention. Not only did it attract his attention, he was so incensed by it that he decided to rebut the article on his organization's website. At first, when I read the e-mail he sent informing me he had written a reply to my story, I couldn't figure out who the hell this man was or where he came from. I thought at first he was from some obscure college I'd never heard of and was, like me, a student.
Nope, not only is this man not a student but he is the executive director of the NAS. So, let's look at the situation. Here we have me, 21-year-old college junior writing in the Mac Weekly, circulation 20 (good week), writing on a subject that perhaps twelve people in the US besides Mac students and faculty are aware exists; next, we have Mr. Peter Wood Executive Director writing about my article from the Mac Weekly, circulation 20 (good week), rebutting my piece on a subject that perhaps twelve people in the US besides Mac students and faculty are aware exists, citing my piece "surpassing any indictment against contemporary American higher education" his organization has ever made. Well golly.
I was also surprised to learn that I ought to start learning history, culture, philosophy and writing, and the J.S. Bach was born 135 years after his death. Have I fallen into a world where adult men must make a living attacking the 500-word op-ed pieces of college students, and where baroque composers outlive themselves by a full century? What strange happenings go on in the world these days. While the arguments he makes are broad enough to sail supertankers through - including being guilty of making broad generalizations, the same fault he cites is my failing in the piece - it would be not just demeaning to respond to criticism like his, but it'd quite simply waste my time. Ah, catharsis. Also, what the hell do I gain by telling him to fuck off? If some whackjob wants to act like a junior high kid and use me as a poster boy for his own ideological purposes, let him. I stopped pulling that sort of shit around the time I learned algebra in seventh-grade. Man, I hope this recession ends soon. This dude could use a real job.
Here's the link to his article
Here's my article in the Mac Weekly
Here's a picture of a small child flipping the bird
(Figures 9-13: Rick and Dad; Dad and Diana; Judy and Grandma Anne; Judy, Sylvia and Grandma Anne)
(Figures 14-21: Sylvia and Rebecca; Judy and Helen; Steve getting Martha; Sam and Dad; Jesse and Helen; Cedar and Martha; Helen, Cedar and Martha; Jesse and Helen)
