The Reports of My Demise

Just a silly picture of me taken at the Twain Museum. I liked the museum quite a bit and the tour of the house was great.  My favorite part, perversely, was the admission by the tour guide that while Twain thought that he and Dickens were great literary rivals, apparently Dickens didn't know that they were.  And, well, come on, Dickens was twice the writer that Twain was (said the unrepentant Dickens fan). That said, the trip really made me want to reread Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and especially Life on the Mississippi. This picture reminds me of the wonderful Marvin Cole, who was the president of DeKalb (eventually to become Georgia Perimeter) College when I began my teaching career.  He was that remarkably rare individual: a selfless administrator who primarily valued teaching and the life of the mind.  And he really liked me.  When he retired several of us got together and gave him a first edition of Life on the Mississippi.

For some reason this was a very popular picture on Facebook, which may help to explain why I'm no longer on FB.