Shipmates,
Well shiver me timbers! The Dread Pirate
Dewey has less than one month of servitude left in his contract aboard the
mighty Pequod! For about three and one-half months, your humble guide to all
things both nautical and bibliographical has been slaving away over his
keyboard for the elderly republicans who call the high seas their temporary
homes!
To be honest mates, I find it hard to
believe that the waves of salty brine that have seeped into my very pores will
soon recede leaving me just another landlubber!* Soon, I shall stand amongst
you, shoulder-to-shoulder, jostling for a mere view of the ocean blue and its
plentitude, and stymied by my poor soil-grubbing existence in the search for
that ever-retreating horizon!
On the other hook, I will no longer be
required to jump to the demands the decrepit crustaceans that scuttle about the
deck of the mighty Pequod! No longer shall ancient conservatives be able to
foist their unholy will upon me!** I shall be free to skip and jump, to sleep
in, to shrug off the cross of orange that is my perpetual burden! Free at last, oh lord, free
at last!****
And yet, on the third hook, I have recently
taken to my salty breast a fiery first mate, and our rovings are legend amongst
those in tune with the way of the seas! I’ve come to depend on this young
piratess—she combs my parrots, loads my muskets, makes sure that my eye patch
is set at its proper rakish angle—in short, she has become an important part of
this pirate’s life. But fear not oh over-romantic readers! A short week after
my return to the dismal stretch of land I once called home, I shall once more
board the mighty Pequod! This time as a “friend on board.” Basically, I live as
a crew member aboard the ship with none of the actual responsibilities of my
then-previous job—for free!
But on the final hook, these ruminations
have opened the door to the larger issue haunting my mind as of late: what
shall become of The Dread Pirate Dewey after the period of his indentured
servitude to his cruel Seattleite overlords has ended? At the moment, I am
pretty committed to one more contract sailing the Panama Canal aboard the
mighty Pequod!***** But after that? Recently I have been leaning towards a
triumphant return to the hallowed halls of academia; the literal cut and thrust
of the Pirate’s life being no replacement for the more figurative variety
offered by a career spend doing intellectual battle for the very souls of the
young scholars! Then yesterday I had a rather illuminating exchange with a
passenger. He was looking for info on some small town in the North West
Territories, the home of an interesting artisan he had just met in port. As I was
explaining that we probably didn’t have anything specific enough, he suddenly
asked me where I went to school. I told him Bishop’s (yea!) amongst other
schools and politely asked him where he had gone. He answered in rapid fire
that he had received his BA, MA, and PhD from UCLA, that he was a retired
professor of Native American studies, and had written 12 books. Ok, I said.
After a fruitless search for the information he was looking for, I left him at
the atlas, but not before he implied that Canadian universities offered little
in the way of Native Studies. I explained that, actually, every university I
had attended offered many courses on the field; I was simply uninterested in
taking them. The exchange left a bad taste in my mouth.
Are these the dry ashes of small-minded
bitterness upon which I shall feast if I steer my bark down these academic
waters? Should this lusty pirate abandon a course through the tumultuous seas
of fragile egos in favour of another watery path? Or is “Mr. 12 Books” merely
an example of the kind of jerk one must face in any line of work?
*Like you, dearest reader.
**Unless I need to borrow my parents’
van…***
***Just kidding! Love you moms and dad!
****Too far?
*****Well, not the same Pequod, but another
incarnation thereof.
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