From The Mailbag

I receive a lot of email from students.  Most of it is, through no fault of their own, not terribly interesting.  I get a lot of "I won't be in class because of XXXXXXXXXX" letters, and, "I was sick last week- did I miss anything?" (Naw... absolutely nothing of consequence).   It's part of the job, and I don't think too much of it. Every now and then I get a letter from a student passing on an article or video clip, and I love getting those when it's something that truly interests me.  My heart sinks a bit though when they say "I saw this and thought of you" and it's something that downright controverts what I teach.  Today I got a message from a student that included something that was relevant (sort of) to what I talk about in class, but this was so far out it nearly made my head spin:

http://entertainment.msn.com/videopreview/?channelindex=4&from=en-us_msnhp#/video/5d93aaa3-4612-48aa-9a3d-680d6a355e25

I do hope you watched the clip from the site above so you know what I'm talking about.
The student wanted to know what I thought.  What did I think?  Well, you know what it's like when a little bit of breakfast comes up into the back of your throat and you gag on it once or twice before it heads back down? That's what happened to my brain. It's hard to list all of the things I found wrong with that media clip.

This is obviously from Animal Planet, as the logo in the upper right corner attests, but otherwise my immediate question would be “What planet are the producers from”?  The guy they interviewed, Mr. Salako Kalfu, is the director of the “Occult Research Bureau.”  The fact that he isn’t flashing some spiffy title from a legitimate, accredited  university or research institute, or a degree conferred upon him from one, speaks volumes.  A “Bureau” is usually an arm of a government, like the FBI or the Census Bureau.  Apart from the Better Business Bureau (a legitimate nongovernmental organization) I can’t think of a private association that goes by the name “Bureau,” although it sure does sound official, doesn’t it?

As it turns out, the OCB happens to have a website, in which they say:  “The Occult Research Bureau has within its ranks; [sic] staffers, researchers and consultants from many different paths including: Cultus Vampiricus kindred, Druids, Magicians, Occultists, Satanists, Shamans, Thelemites, Voodooists, and Witches…”

I have no idea what “Cultus Vampiricus kindred" are, but I imagine they are people who like to attend Twilight screenings and comic book conventions more than American Anthropological Association meetings.  Since the acknowledged experts on Neandertals are all biological anthropologists, it seems like more than an unfortunate oversight that the producers failed to include one of them in their film.  Instead they chose to talk with some crazy old  Kazakh peasant and the “director” of a motley band of Satanists, zombie hunters and voodoo priests.  I guess that isn’t quite fair, since they never claimed to have zombie hunters in their group.   Where there are vampire cultists, the zombie hunters are usually not far behind.

I am shocked (if not somewhat relieved) that “sasquatch” was never mentioned, although some of that footage sure looked like it was recycled from one of those cheesy History Channel documentaries they run endlessly during "Bigfoot Week."  Nevertheless, this represents a bit of a departure for the cryptozoologists, for I've never seen them hitch onto the Neandertal train before.  None of the druids, shamans and Thelemites (had to look them up- basically disciples of Aleister Crowley) I know tend to give Neandertals much thought to begin with.  So I wish they would leave the Neandertals out of their pseudo-scientific mocumentaries- cave men have enough public relations problems as it is.  I find the GEICO ads to be a more constructive use of paleoanthropology than Animal Planet’s cynical race to the bottom of the ratings food chain to eat whatever carrion is left on the corpse of educational programming's integrity.

From time to time I get spam from a former student, or more rightly, from my student's email account after it gets hacked.  I just delete it.  The other day though I got spammed by one of my better former students.  He was quiet, so we didn't interact a lot, but he was a dependable workhorse and I remember giving him some advice when he was looking at colleges. I remembered him well and hoped that his identity hadn't been stolen by the Bulgarian mafia.  A day later, I got this letter from him:

Hi Professor Healy-

I just wanted to let you know that I recently had a little trouble with my email and it seems a bunch of emails have been sent out, under my name to all of my contacts.  Please  know these emails are not at all something I was looking to send and if you did receive one, just go ahead and delete it from your inbox.  I'm working on sorting out the problem and if you happen to get any other emails like that, please let me know and I will get in touch with anybody else who might have been affected.  The other emails typically only have a link in them which, actually, doesn't seem to work.
On the positive side, this did give me the opportunity to reconnect with a few old friends!  I'm not even sure if you would remember me, but I took all four of your classes at ECC a while back and I enjoyed every one of them.  I remember you gave me some advice and really helped me along and I really appreciate it!  You were a fantastic teacher and one of my favorites at ECC.  Once you even gave me a hand getting things organized as I was getting ready to transfer, and even though I didn't major in Anthropology it really stuck with me that you went out of your way to give me that kind of support.  Now I have a degree in geography and am eventually looking to go into teaching or parks and recreation and I just want to let you know what an impact you had on me!  Thank you so much for all the wonderful classes and advice and I hope everything is well with you and your family!

Best wishes and I hope to keep in touch a little more!  Even if you don't remember me (understandable with all the students and years that have passed,) it was really good to get in touch with you!

Well, that pretty much made my day.  I get these kinds of letters every now and again, and they are precious.    So I sent my student the following reply:

Hi XXXX-

Email being what it is, I often get spam from old students when their email accounts get raided, so I don’t think anything of it.  I know it when I see it.  It often affords me the opportunity to jog my memory- I admit that some of the names that pop up are rather dim in my recollection, but yours was not one of them.  You were an excellent student, and you are among the small fellowship of masochists who sat through just about every lecture I give at ECC.  So I remember you well and appreciate hearing from you.
The kindness of your message is all the more welcome, and I am thrilled that whatever advice I gave you made a positive impact on your life.  I hope you can use your geography degree according to your plans, but I am certain that no matter what you end up doing your degree will make you better at whatever it is you are called upon to accomplish.  I know many people who have social science degrees who have gone on to pursue careers that have seemingly little to do with their majors, but they always say that their concentrated studies in the social studies have been invaluable in making them who they are and honing their talents.  The difficulty, however, with having studied geography will be the utter lack of familiarity with the discipline that you will find among those by whom you are surrounded.  If everyone had your perspective, however, it would make you a far less interesting person.  So take satisfaction in the fact that you have something of value to bring to any table.

Do stay in touch.  I’m on Facebook, and if you run across any interesting articles, do send them along to me.

Regards,

Marc

I am lucky to be in a line of work where people bother to show their appreciation from time to time.  I think the efforts of a lot of people who work hard at their jobs and do good work don't often get recognized, so I try to thank people and give them positive feedback when I think they deserve it, because I know I appreciate it when people show their appreciation to me.  When my family gathered for my father's memorial service last summer and students of his from thirty-five years ago showed up, it was a humbling experience.  A few weeks later I made a point of calling some of my former teachers to thanks them personally, because my Dad never got to see the outpouring of appreciation after he died.  He had already been thanked enough as far as he was concerned, but I wanted to make sure that my mentors heard straight from me that I appreciated their impact on my lives.  

From my personal experience, a teacher always loves to hear from an old student.

Even if they've run off and joined the "Cultus Vampiricus" or some crazy shit.  (What's up with that?)

Mr. Lowrie, Eat Your Heart Out

     I've made no secret about my life's great ambition being to invent a sandwich that will bear my name for generations to come. This has proven a more difficult task than you might imagine. For one thing, apart from coming up with the actual sandwich itself, I can't quite land upon a proper name.  "The Marc" is just too generic- any chump who shares my name can try to steal the glory that should rightfully be mine.  "The Healy" is just too obvious, and in Ireland the reputation of the name is already associated with prison rioters, defrocked clerics, and (largely baseless) accusations of horse thievery.  But difficulties aside, I am confident that at some point I will be able to marry  bread, spread, meat and moniker to make culinary magic that will re-write sandwich history.

     Our local library has a little cafe that was advertising their special- a sandwich called "The Lowrie." It was some trifling little turkey number with nothing particularly memorable about it, and I thought it unfair that this "Lowrie" character should enjoy such an honor for having slapped together an entirely forgettable sandwich. Of course, the green-eyed monster was rearing his ugly head. I resolved to go back to the drawing board with one of my earlier experiments that had previously failed to bear fruit- a novel combination of two great sandwiches that, properly combined, could be even better: the venerable "Reuben" and the celebrated "Cubano." Best yet, it had a couple of catchy naming possibilities that came virtually ready-made: The "Reubano" or "Cuban Reuben." Think of a Reuben sandwich on a pumpernickel baguette, grilled on a panino press. It was a clever idea, I thought, even if I couldn't make it my signature sandwich. The problem, however, was the bread.

     "Pumpernickel" and "baguette" are mutually exclusive bread concepts in the minds of most people. At one point I had tried to solve that problem by making my own loaf, which yielded a particularly effective doorstop but little in the way of edible bread. In all honesty, I'm not much of a baker (despite being a fair cook in other respects), so I figured I would outsource this step in the process. Thus I commissioned the bakery experts at one of our local grocery stores to produce a pumpernickel baguette on my behalf as a special order.  They cheerfully accepted the commission, although the results left me questioning whether these hairnetted, beaproned ladies were, in fact, experienced artisanal bread bakers or, as I was increasingly suspecting, mere worker drones who had been trained to pull pre-made loaves out of an oven at the sound of a bell as reliably as a dog can be made to salivate.  As congenial as they were, the pumpernickel baguette they produced would surely never help my sandwich star rise.

     But with my resolve newly bolstered by the sheer injustice of this "Lowrie" person's new-found fame, I endeavored to try again.  This time, I went to a DIFFERENT grocery store in town, and submitted the same request.  The bakery worker responded initially with a vacant stare, and ultimately replied by shaking her head and telling me that it couldn't be done.  "Why not?" I asked.  "We get all our baguette dough frozen" she explained.  You would think I had asked her to spin straw into gold.  I pointed to a rack of baguette loaf pans about six feet away and said, "Can't you just form the pumpernickel dough into a long, skinny loaf and bake it on the baguette pan?" At that point she enlisted the help of another worker, who was as skeptical as her companion about the feasibility of the request.  "THIS is the only pumpernickel we have."  she said, motioning to a large loaf about half as long and twice as wide as a typical baguette. Again, I suggested that she simply roll the dough out longer and skinnier and give it a go on the baguette rack.  She looked at the loaf, and I imagined her, in miniature, suspended in a thought bubble above her head, measuring the loaf lengthwise and then again across with an imaginary tape measure.  Presently she agreed with some reluctance to give it a try without making any promises about the results. I told them I would be by the next day to pick it up. As I was walking away I heard her murmuring to her associate "We work the other dough into different shapes, why not the pumpernickel?" like she had just come up with a brilliant idea on her own.

     You might think the concept of the Reubano is kind of an obvious idea, but breaking through that bread barrier seems to be a challenge, not only in its execution, but even in terms of its conception. When I picked up the baguette the next day, however, I was pleased  to discover that at first glance it certainly appeared to be a perfectly serviceable baguette, a bit flatter than normal, and of course the color of a strong coffee, but the slightly flattened shape was even better for the purpose I had in mind. "And they said it COULDN'T be done" I said to myself as I walked to the self-checkout lane.
 
  I scanned my bread and let it slide down the conveyor belt to the bagging area, where the store clerk who was overseeing the self-check took notice of it. "This is new!" she quipped, picking up my bread and eyeing it quizzickally, albeit admiringly.  "What are you going to make with it?" she queried.  I told her my plan, and her eyes widened and she gave an understanding nod.  "I had a Cuban once!" she exclaimed enthusiastically, adding "That's a good sandwich!". She continued: "You know where I had it?" and then she looked around warily, as if she was afraid of being seen talking to me (I get that a lot). She strode over to me and, invading my personal space just a bit, said in a low voice "I had one at the MEXICAN bakery at Highland and Randall." She said "Mexican" slowly, widening her mouth a bit to emphasize it. She gave me the impression that she was sharing confidential information. I'm always more than a bit stunned, not to mention uncomfortable, when I run into old school locals who regard the reality of twenty-first century immigration streams and their consequences as akin to an infectious disease or some unfortunate act of God.  They say "The new manager is MEXICAN" in the same tone as if they might say "He's got THE CANCER" or, "She's dating AN ALBINO."

     At any rate,  I brought my bounty home and indeed, it made the best Reubano yet, but I'm still fine-tuning the concept.  I'm close to adding another sandwich to my culinary repertoire, but still in pursuit of that elusive, eponymous creation that will put me in the Sandwich Hall Of Fame right between "The Earl" and ol' Reuben himself, whoever the heck HE was.