Category Archives: shipwreck

On a stormy night

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Thunderstorms are rolling through central Texas. I do have to leave one car out in the chaos, but it's a little old and can handle it. The suspense is strange because we can watch the storms approach on radar. They look menacing, but will they really make it to Waco? We could use the rain, but we don't need hail or strong winds, and we certainly don't need tornados or damaging winds to knock down our homes, buildings, or trees. The fury of Mother Nature is quite humbling. She can manage to move enormous amounts of wind and rain, hail, and show us how weak and pathetic we really are. We put up all kinds of structures, pretending that they will last in spite of the weather and the passing of time. Putting up structures has been the story of mankind, but the ruins of those structures stand as mute testimony to the enduring power of Mother Nature to blow-off roofs, knock down trees, break windows, and shatter the dreams of builders and architects everywhere. In a sense, the normal state of any building or structure is a ruin. When we see or experience a building in its pristine or new, recently constructed state, we are experiencing the exception to the rule that all buildings will always end in a ruin. Whatever the architect's original dream was, all buildings will always end up in an archeologist's sketch book. Thunderstorms are an implacable metaphor for the destructive nature of time. The violence of lightening and wind, driving rain, are indicative of the giant forces that lie just below the surface of a beautiful spring day. Behind the moderate temperatures, blue skies, and light breezes lurk the life-changing destructive powers of nature. We make the error of thinking that we are in control with our beautiful homes, air-conditioning, and heating, but the sad truth is that this is nothing but hubris and wishful thinking. A beautiful day is really a simulacrum for peace and tranquility, and we all know that peace and tranquility are just a bit of wishful thinking that precede a dark night of disasters and broken dreams. Stormy nights like this one are made for contemplating the darker side of life, for thinking about the fragility of our plans, and how those plans can so easily go astray, run up on the rocks, go up in smoke. A stormy night is a reminder for everyone that we are not in control, and that all of our attempts to simulate control are both erroneous and pointless. We stand at the edge of a chasm without really knowing it or realizing it. We put on a good face, a mask of civility which hides the fear, the sadness, the doubts. A stormy night mirrors the internal chaos of each person--depression, melancholy, conflict, fears, and desire. Whether the rain and hail fall, whether the winds blow, whether the lightening strikes, is immaterial, it is the metaphor of the impending storm that matters. Who knows if it will ever rain again, but the threat is out there, the storm approaches, and everything is uncertain.

On a stormy night

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Thunderstorms are rolling through central Texas. I do have to leave one car out in the chaos, but it's a little old and can handle it. The suspense is strange because we can watch the storms approach on radar. They look menacing, but will they really make it to Waco? We could use the rain, but we don't need hail or strong winds, and we certainly don't need tornados or damaging winds to knock down our homes, buildings, or trees. The fury of Mother Nature is quite humbling. She can manage to move enormous amounts of wind and rain, hail, and show us how weak and pathetic we really are. We put up all kinds of structures, pretending that they will last in spite of the weather and the passing of time. Putting up structures has been the story of mankind, but the ruins of those structures stand as mute testimony to the enduring power of Mother Nature to blow-off roofs, knock down trees, break windows, and shatter the dreams of builders and architects everywhere. In a sense, the normal state of any building or structure is a ruin. When we see or experience a building in its pristine or new, recently constructed state, we are experiencing the exception to the rule that all buildings will always end in a ruin. Whatever the architect's original dream was, all buildings will always end up in an archeologist's sketch book. Thunderstorms are an implacable metaphor for the destructive nature of time. The violence of lightening and wind, driving rain, are indicative of the giant forces that lie just below the surface of a beautiful spring day. Behind the moderate temperatures, blue skies, and light breezes lurk the life-changing destructive powers of nature. We make the error of thinking that we are in control with our beautiful homes, air-conditioning, and heating, but the sad truth is that this is nothing but hubris and wishful thinking. A beautiful day is really a simulacrum for peace and tranquility, and we all know that peace and tranquility are just a bit of wishful thinking that precede a dark night of disasters and broken dreams. Stormy nights like this one are made for contemplating the darker side of life, for thinking about the fragility of our plans, and how those plans can so easily go astray, run up on the rocks, go up in smoke. A stormy night is a reminder for everyone that we are not in control, and that all of our attempts to simulate control are both erroneous and pointless. We stand at the edge of a chasm without really knowing it or realizing it. We put on a good face, a mask of civility which hides the fear, the sadness, the doubts. A stormy night mirrors the internal chaos of each person--depression, melancholy, conflict, fears, and desire. Whether the rain and hail fall, whether the winds blow, whether the lightening strikes, is immaterial, it is the metaphor of the impending storm that matters. Who knows if it will ever rain again, but the threat is out there, the storm approaches, and everything is uncertain.

On Pi, Richard Parker, and Don Quixote

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I am reading "The Life of Pi" (Martell) again, and I am again troubled by the dueling stories offered by Pi to the Japanese insurance investigators. Most anyone who has read the novel gets a pie (Pi?) in the face toward the end of the novel when Pi offers up an alternative story/explanation to his time at sea, adrift, in a life boat. His alternative story involving his mother and a couple errant crewmen is a shocking reversal to his story about the tiger Richard Parker and their solitary days adrift at sea. The insurance investigators are mesmerized by Pi's story of survival, danger, and fear, but they are also incredulous, and could not believe Pi's wild story of shipwreck and survival in a lifeboat with a full-grown Bengal tiger. After they question his story--no tiger to be seen anywhere--Pi tells an alternative version that does not involve a tiger, but his alternate version is violent, tragic, grisly, sad, and mundane, lacking the verve and imagination of the same story involving Richard Parker, the tiger. The insurance investigators, who by their very nature must be cynics, are only looking for the facts, and an imaginative and unbelievable story involving a non-existent (at least from their point of view) tiger will not help them settle a multimillion dollar claim on the lost ship. They are pragmatists. They want an explanation they can sell to others. The problem is that Pi tells two stories, one, about how he tames a tiger and rides out a long shipwreck narrative at sea, the other story, the short version, is about how Pi might have witnessed the murder of his mother while he himself might have murdered others in order to survive. During my first reading experience with Pi and Richard Parker, I opted to believe the strange story that Pi narrates about his life in India, the crossing on the ship, the shipwreck, the lifeboat, and Richard Parker. The story is elaborate and unusual, but it chronicles a fight for survival, the ability to adapt to changing circumstance, courage and the unwillingness to just give up in the face of horrible odds. Pi works to train the tiger, fight off boredom and fear, fishes, collects fresh water, does everything in his power to survive. He makes a heroes journey from the depths of despair to the top of Olympus when he and Richard Parker finally come ashore in Mexico. This is a story about the strength of the human heart, about human ingenuity, about loving life, about surviving in the face of enormous odds. Pi's story about his interactions with a Bengal tiger seems highly improbable given the killer nature of a hungry predator. In fact, Pi's story is so improbable that it seems impossible, but there is a huge distance between improbable and impossible. Perhaps believing in one story or the other is a question of what Cervantes called "verisimilitude" in a narration. The Spaniard felt that although readers had to suspend their disbelief while reading a novel, a writer must also give his readers a place to "hang their hats," so to speak--that the story had to have its feet on the ground at some point to be believable. If you are writing about a crazy guy who thinks he's a knight, plays with horses and swords, you must first make him a regular guy who people might meet in the street on any given day, so before you invent Don Quixote, you must first invent Alonso Quijano, the Good. I believe Jan Martell is playing on the ground between fantasy and verisimilitude, walking a thin line between what is possible and improbable and impossible and fantastic. Martell rocks the narrative boat by offering a very real alternative that lacks any sort of improbable elements--no tiger, no fantasy, handing readers a problem: which narrative do they choose to believe.

On Pi, Richard Parker, and Don Quixote

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I am reading "The Life of Pi" (Martell) again, and I am again troubled by the dueling stories offered by Pi to the Japanese insurance investigators. Most anyone who has read the novel gets a pie (Pi?) in the face toward the end of the novel when Pi offers up an alternative story/explanation to his time at sea, adrift, in a life boat. His alternative story involving his mother and a couple errant crewmen is a shocking reversal to his story about the tiger Richard Parker and their solitary days adrift at sea. The insurance investigators are mesmerized by Pi's story of survival, danger, and fear, but they are also incredulous, and could not believe Pi's wild story of shipwreck and survival in a lifeboat with a full-grown Bengal tiger. After they question his story--no tiger to be seen anywhere--Pi tells an alternative version that does not involve a tiger, but his alternate version is violent, tragic, grisly, sad, and mundane, lacking the verve and imagination of the same story involving Richard Parker, the tiger. The insurance investigators, who by their very nature must be cynics, are only looking for the facts, and an imaginative and unbelievable story involving a non-existent (at least from their point of view) tiger will not help them settle a multimillion dollar claim on the lost ship. They are pragmatists. They want an explanation they can sell to others. The problem is that Pi tells two stories, one, about how he tames a tiger and rides out a long shipwreck narrative at sea, the other story, the short version, is about how Pi might have witnessed the murder of his mother while he himself might have murdered others in order to survive. During my first reading experience with Pi and Richard Parker, I opted to believe the strange story that Pi narrates about his life in India, the crossing on the ship, the shipwreck, the lifeboat, and Richard Parker. The story is elaborate and unusual, but it chronicles a fight for survival, the ability to adapt to changing circumstance, courage and the unwillingness to just give up in the face of horrible odds. Pi works to train the tiger, fight off boredom and fear, fishes, collects fresh water, does everything in his power to survive. He makes a heroes journey from the depths of despair to the top of Olympus when he and Richard Parker finally come ashore in Mexico. This is a story about the strength of the human heart, about human ingenuity, about loving life, about surviving in the face of enormous odds. Pi's story about his interactions with a Bengal tiger seems highly improbable given the killer nature of a hungry predator. In fact, Pi's story is so improbable that it seems impossible, but there is a huge distance between improbable and impossible. Perhaps believing in one story or the other is a question of what Cervantes called "verisimilitude" in a narration. The Spaniard felt that although readers had to suspend their disbelief while reading a novel, a writer must also give his readers a place to "hang their hats," so to speak--that the story had to have its feet on the ground at some point to be believable. If you are writing about a crazy guy who thinks he's a knight, plays with horses and swords, you must first make him a regular guy who people might meet in the street on any given day, so before you invent Don Quixote, you must first invent Alonso Quijano, the Good. I believe Jan Martell is playing on the ground between fantasy and verisimilitude, walking a thin line between what is possible and improbable and impossible and fantastic. Martell rocks the narrative boat by offering a very real alternative that lacks any sort of improbable elements--no tiger, no fantasy, handing readers a problem: which narrative do they choose to believe.

On a molded gelatin salad

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Whenever I feel a bittersweet feeling of melancholy and nostalgia creep into my bones, I also start to think about all of the molded gelatin salads that I ate at innumerable potlucks held by the Lutheran ladies in the church of my youth. Although I wouldn't blame Lutherans for inventing the molded jello salad, I would fault them for raising the recipe to high art, albeit "pop" art, populism in its most base form. Though the term "exotic" never enters the same sentence describing the nature of gelatin desserts, most cooks making a strangely shaped gelatin dessert thought they were bordering on the exotic, if not original, use of gelatin. Whenever I eat gelatin, I am always reminded of the bowls of red gelatin that came out in summer to celebrate friends, family and colleagues at picnics, reunions, and random get-togethers. I still love red gelatin, but I don't want anything odd in it. I think there still exists a tendency on the part of some cooks to "jazz up" their recipes and presentations by adding other foods, fruit cocktail and little canned tangerines being among the most common. I have also see shrimp, tuna, cabbage, olives, anchovies, spam, celery, carrots and radishes floating suspended in green gelatin. There is something rather grotesque about seeing a shrimp suspended in green gelatin coming toward your mouth. Just because you can suspend different fruits, vegetables, meats, and fish in gelatin does not mean you should do it, necessarily. Gelatin is rather sweet, and it seems rather diabolical, if not unethical, to mix olives and Spam into a molded gelatin salad--and it's not really salad either. I've seen people make some rather entertaining desserts constructed of gelatin cubes and whipped cream, but this a far cry from celery, carrots and cabbage in gelatin. I often wonder if the creators of such monstrosities ever eat their own potential fiascoes. Gelatin as a food is problematic for lots of reasons, not the least of which is its wiggly nature. Being transparent doesn't help because unwary cooks will always fall into the trap of trying to put something interesting into the gelatin for the unwary consumer to look at. Just because you can do something does not necessarily mean you should. Gelatin cut into cubes, stacked in a decorative glass, and topped with a little whipped cream, though not very daring, is an acceptable dessert. Gelatin forced into strange molds of fish, dogs, geometric shapes, and rings is not. Is there a creepier food out there than a yellow gelatin molded fish with canned mandarin oranges and tiny salad shrimps suspended in it? And it's been garnished with celery and parsley by some adventurous and imaginative cook who scammed the recipe out of that one church cookbook her cousin Marge gave her. Or a large five-pointed star of molded red gelatin in which someone has suspended chopped olives, fruit cocktail, and shredded carrots? Perhaps the only thing weirder than that is seeing a ring of orange gelatin with little bits of stuff floating in it which you cannot identify at all. I've eaten a lot of weird things, but between the slimy giggle factor and its unidentified contents, a strange molded gelatin salad is not my idea of good eats, but I say this not because I hate gelatin, but because as a food it has been abused by creative cooks anxious to impress the in-laws with some wildly exotic combination of shredded Spam and horseradish, which when suspended in gelatin in the company of white rice might be considered criminal behavior. Really, don't make me cry. Just give me a bowl of red gelatin with nothing weird in it, and I will be a happy camper--end of story.

On a molded gelatin salad

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Whenever I feel a bittersweet feeling of melancholy and nostalgia creep into my bones, I also start to think about all of the molded gelatin salads that I ate at innumerable potlucks held by the Lutheran ladies in the church of my youth. Although I wouldn't blame Lutherans for inventing the molded jello salad, I would fault them for raising the recipe to high art, albeit "pop" art, populism in its most base form. Though the term "exotic" never enters the same sentence describing the nature of gelatin desserts, most cooks making a strangely shaped gelatin dessert thought they were bordering on the exotic, if not original, use of gelatin. Whenever I eat gelatin, I am always reminded of the bowls of red gelatin that came out in summer to celebrate friends, family and colleagues at picnics, reunions, and random get-togethers. I still love red gelatin, but I don't want anything odd in it. I think there still exists a tendency on the part of some cooks to "jazz up" their recipes and presentations by adding other foods, fruit cocktail and little canned tangerines being among the most common. I have also see shrimp, tuna, cabbage, olives, anchovies, spam, celery, carrots and radishes floating suspended in green gelatin. There is something rather grotesque about seeing a shrimp suspended in green gelatin coming toward your mouth. Just because you can suspend different fruits, vegetables, meats, and fish in gelatin does not mean you should do it, necessarily. Gelatin is rather sweet, and it seems rather diabolical, if not unethical, to mix olives and Spam into a molded gelatin salad--and it's not really salad either. I've seen people make some rather entertaining desserts constructed of gelatin cubes and whipped cream, but this a far cry from celery, carrots and cabbage in gelatin. I often wonder if the creators of such monstrosities ever eat their own potential fiascoes. Gelatin as a food is problematic for lots of reasons, not the least of which is its wiggly nature. Being transparent doesn't help because unwary cooks will always fall into the trap of trying to put something interesting into the gelatin for the unwary consumer to look at. Just because you can do something does not necessarily mean you should. Gelatin cut into cubes, stacked in a decorative glass, and topped with a little whipped cream, though not very daring, is an acceptable dessert. Gelatin forced into strange molds of fish, dogs, geometric shapes, and rings is not. Is there a creepier food out there than a yellow gelatin molded fish with canned mandarin oranges and tiny salad shrimps suspended in it? And it's been garnished with celery and parsley by some adventurous and imaginative cook who scammed the recipe out of that one church cookbook her cousin Marge gave her. Or a large five-pointed star of molded red gelatin in which someone has suspended chopped olives, fruit cocktail, and shredded carrots? Perhaps the only thing weirder than that is seeing a ring of orange gelatin with little bits of stuff floating in it which you cannot identify at all. I've eaten a lot of weird things, but between the slimy giggle factor and its unidentified contents, a strange molded gelatin salad is not my idea of good eats, but I say this not because I hate gelatin, but because as a food it has been abused by creative cooks anxious to impress the in-laws with some wildly exotic combination of shredded Spam and horseradish, which when suspended in gelatin in the company of white rice might be considered criminal behavior. Really, don't make me cry. Just give me a bowl of red gelatin with nothing weird in it, and I will be a happy camper--end of story.

On Robinson Crusoe

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Robinson Crusoe, just as fictional a character as Don Quixote or Sherlock Holmes, has come to be just as real as Ishmael or Harry Potter. Shipwrecked and alone on a Caribbean island, Crusoe must rebuild his solitary life as an Englishman, lost in a wilderness and with no hope of rescue in the near future. The idea of living for years, abandoned and alone on an island far from civilization, is a frightening one. Most people cannot even begin to imagine what it might be like to live in isolation from all human contact. Of course, there are those who might dream of such an arrangement, but for the most part, we are gregarious and need human interaction to be happy and productive. Human interaction gives meaning and purpose to our lives. Being a "castaway" with no hope of rescue is almost as horrifying as being walled up behind a brick wall. Our literature is filled with these surreal situations which firmly address some of the deepest and darkest human fears, one of which being the fate of Robinson Crusoe: to find oneself totally alone with no hope of relief in the near future. The very term, "castaway," seems to devalue the victim of an accident over which they may have had no control, such as shipwreck. To be a castaway is to find oneself alone and abandoned, deprived of the creature comforts, deprived of human interaction, deprived of the structures that give our lives meaning--law, commerce, culture, society, ethics, art, time, neighbors, family. The enormous challenge that the character must face is his own motivation for taking care of himself in the face of having to live absolutely alone forever. The idea of rescue is probably the only thing that stands between Crusoe and his own insanity. In other words, the hope of rescue, no matter how small, is that one little glimmer of hope that keeps the castaway from just lying down and dying where he has washed up on the shore of his desert island. What is curious about the novel and Crusoe is how he is faced with reinventing a series of technologies that he has always taken for granted: the wheel, a shovel, baskets, bottles, cooking dishes, barrels. Eventually, he will adapt what he has on the island to solve many of these sorts of problems, but he is very vexed at recreating a table and chair for himself, realizing that the skilled craftsman who create these common everyday items are very highly skilled and armed with the highly specialized tools of their trades. Alone with only a minimum of tools and raw materials, Crusoe must come to terms with his own inadequacy as a craftsman with no training and no skills. Crusoe cannot reinvent England on his island, although he tries very hard. When he is sick, he has no doctor, when he wants to make bread, he has no flour, when he needs advice, he is alone. He lives, eats, sleeps, hunts, works, and walks absolutely by himself. When the tide rises, the storms rise up, the earth shakes, the sun beats down, he must face all of these things alone. Crusoe's levels of desperation are real and frequently bring him to tears, but the power of self-preservation is so strong and so persistent that in spite of an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, he still gets up every day and stays alive, working, eating, cleaning, planning, inventing, solving problems. Crusoe's story is credible, verging on verisimilitude, in fact because the human spirit, even in the face of horrific odds, is indomitable and unbending, invincible as it were. Crusoe has lots of failures as he attempts to rebuild English society on his little island, but he also has many successes, growing grain, training a parrot, building his "homes." In the end, of course, he does leave his island with his man, Friday, but he has spent almost three decades on his desert island jail.

On losing

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Perhaps there is no better lesson in life than learning to lose well. Those that say winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing, are doomed to a life of frustration and despair. Some win and others lose, but in the end, most lose. In all the major professional sports, all except the one winning team end their seasons with a loss or have a losing record. Learning to lose well and be a good sport about it is even more important in real life situations where you don’t get the job, a project falls through, you get laid off, you just don’t get picked, the promotion train leaves you behind, she/he picks someone else and leaves you alone. Life, especially in politics where winning and losing define us as a nation, is mostly about losing and seldom about winning. For most of my life I’ve had to deal with losing most or all of the elections in which I’ve had any interest at all, and sometimes not particularly thrilled about the ones I’ve won. Winning is illusory and fleeting because all people remember is the last five minutes, not the last five years. History is full of losing causes, but you seldom see them because the winners write the stories. Losing is a day-to-day fact that has to be sucked up and dealt with. There are lots of sad and angry people around America tonight because they think their loss was unjust or unwarranted or just plain wrong. Yet I would also suggest that if their candidate lost tonight, that it will mean little or nothing tomorrow. You see, that’s the secret about losing in politics: there is always another election in two years, or four years, or six years. Nothing in life is forever, not even taxes. Look at Richard Nixon, he was a big-time loser in 1960 who went on to score a couple of sweet conservative victories before he publicly disgraced himself with Watergate. Gerald Ford, the man who pardoned him and assumed the office of the presidency had to live with the bitter notion that he was never elected to be the president of the United States—he had to be appointed. Nixon, in his second election against George McGovern, a man who really knew how to lose, Nixon took 49 of 50 states. McGovern didn’t even take his home state. I’m not about to say that losing builds character because that ‘s not true, but losing might temper your character, and you might develop such mental health factors such as empathy, kindness, generosity, self-awareness, tolerance. If the only thing you can see in tonight’s loss is your own bruised ego, then you have a little soul-searching to do because this loss is nothing compared to what life has in store for you. And you won’t like it, and it will be much worse than any political whipping you might endure. Life is not about winning anything, but it is about enduring loss and losing because that’s all we have some days, so we better know how to handle it when the clouds turn black and you find yourself in the midst of a dark night, off of the path, lost in a dark and savage wood. Grace in the face of a loss never goes unnoticed or unappreciated. Funny how life works that way.

On losing

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Perhaps there is no better lesson in life than learning to lose well. Those that say winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing, are doomed to a life of frustration and despair. Some win and others lose, but in the end, most lose. In all the major professional sports, all except the one winning team end their seasons with a loss or have a losing record. Learning to lose well and be a good sport about it is even more important in real life situations where you don’t get the job, a project falls through, you get laid off, you just don’t get picked, the promotion train leaves you behind, she/he picks someone else and leaves you alone. Life, especially in politics where winning and losing define us as a nation, is mostly about losing and seldom about winning. For most of my life I’ve had to deal with losing most or all of the elections in which I’ve had any interest at all, and sometimes not particularly thrilled about the ones I’ve won. Winning is illusory and fleeting because all people remember is the last five minutes, not the last five years. History is full of losing causes, but you seldom see them because the winners write the stories. Losing is a day-to-day fact that has to be sucked up and dealt with. There are lots of sad and angry people around America tonight because they think their loss was unjust or unwarranted or just plain wrong. Yet I would also suggest that if their candidate lost tonight, that it will mean little or nothing tomorrow. You see, that’s the secret about losing in politics: there is always another election in two years, or four years, or six years. Nothing in life is forever, not even taxes. Look at Richard Nixon, he was a big-time loser in 1960 who went on to score a couple of sweet conservative victories before he publicly disgraced himself with Watergate. Gerald Ford, the man who pardoned him and assumed the office of the presidency had to live with the bitter notion that he was never elected to be the president of the United States—he had to be appointed. Nixon, in his second election against George McGovern, a man who really knew how to lose, Nixon took 49 of 50 states. McGovern didn’t even take his home state. I’m not about to say that losing builds character because that ‘s not true, but losing might temper your character, and you might develop such mental health factors such as empathy, kindness, generosity, self-awareness, tolerance. If the only thing you can see in tonight’s loss is your own bruised ego, then you have a little soul-searching to do because this loss is nothing compared to what life has in store for you. And you won’t like it, and it will be much worse than any political whipping you might endure. Life is not about winning anything, but it is about enduring loss and losing because that’s all we have some days, so we better know how to handle it when the clouds turn black and you find yourself in the midst of a dark night, off of the path, lost in a dark and savage wood. Grace in the face of a loss never goes unnoticed or unappreciated. Funny how life works that way.

On bifurcating paths

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How do we end up where we are? The other day a visiting student asked why I became a college professor, and I was at a loss for words. The bifurcating paths of my own life seem chaotic, capricious, and strange. How does one pick a major? Deciding a path of studies is simple for many, but how did a boy from the prairie of southern Minnesota decide to study a language to which he has no ties, neither genetic nor tradition? I had no family in Spain. None of my family had ever been a Spanish teacher or a professor of literature. My people are farmers who tilled the ground, raised chickens and pigs, milked cowes, bailed hay, and picked corn. Nobody had ever conjugated a verb in Spanish, no one had ever read the Cid or Don Quixote, no one had ever worked in a university, written a scholarly paper, or published a book. So an economics professor who didn't know me put me in a Spanish class when I was a freshmen, but only because I had already studied Spanish for five years in junior high and high school. I had done that because my mother and the Spanish teacher were best friends who had met in the League of Women Voters. So what happens if the Spanish teacher's husband doesn't get a job in the local college that brings him (and his Spanish teaching wife) to my home town? What would have happened if I hadn't had a politically active mother who was interested in social justice for women? Where do the bifurcating paths begin? Does it matter that my father had a terrible job in another town that motivated him to search for better work in the town where I grew up? The paths have been splitting over and over again for decades and continue to split even as I write this. So I majored in Spanish at an American-Lutheran-Swedish school whose specialty was really pre-med majors and Lutheran pastors. After I graduated I couldn't get a decent job, but I was motivated to go back to school by a random comment by a favorite History professor--"What about Middlebury?" he said. After I graduated from Middlebury I decided I wanted to live in Europe for awhile, so I did that. Six years earlier, in 1980, walking past a bulletin board at St. Louis University in Madrid I saw an advertisement for the graduate program in Spanish at the University of Minnesota. I applied in 1985, they loved me, I loved them, and I graduated with my PhD in medieval Spanish literature in 1993. The combination of happenstance, historical caprice (Franco was dead), luck, coincidence, serendipitous causalities, and unnatural timing have carried me through the vortex of the space-time continuum to this place called Waco. If the dominoes had not fallen in a very specific way, I might be someone completely different, but even knowing that, I wouldn't change anything, and I say that as if I had any control over any of that chain of choices and happenings. I am the most unlikely person doing a most unlikely job given my history, family and circumstances. How does this happen?