Tuesday, February 10, 2015

A sense of home

Twenty years ago I spent eight months in London, England, researching my Ph.D. thesis.  I stayed at Goodenough College in Bloomsbury. (I was lucky my sister had just stayed there and put in a good word for me.) It was the best eight months of my life.  I not only did a great deal of research but went to ten plays and visited a lot of museums. (I even went on a protest march down Park Lane.)

There was one moment I especially remember.  I think I was walking on the University of London campus on a Sunday afternoon in October, and really felt at home!  But now that I think about it, this probably wasn't a single moment but a composite of several moments.  Memory can work in funny ways.

There's a Woody Guthrie song I like that goes, "The gambling man is rich and the working man is poor and I ain't got no home in this world any more."

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