Home from Boston

I'll have another post up today, perhaps around lunchtime.   I'm bleary-eyed and still struggling with a cold, but I'm back in the office after a very quick one-day trip to Boston yesterday.  I flew out Tuesday night on a red-eye, and flew back in last night.  I went to Massachusetts to take part in the filming of a documentary (at a very nice production studio in Canton) on Kabbalah and Christianity; Lord willing, the documentary will be finished soon and be airing in various places at various times.  I'll keep my readers posted when I know more.  I do promise to post more in the future about my interest in Kabbalah, my work with the Kabbalah Centre, and how it dovetails with my commitment to Christ -- but as I'm currently in the middle of a number of projects related to this topic, it's not the time to be blogging about them.  Soon enough.

Notes on the trip:  This was my first visit to Boston, and on my next visit, I'll have to do more than spend ten hours in the state.  The weather was apparently unseasonably warm, and there were still many beautiful autumn leaves about, even though the prime time for fall foliage has apparently passed.  On the long drive from the airport out to the studio, we drove through towns like Natick, Wellesley, and Needham.  If only through the back of a town car, it was a very pleasant experience.  Years ago, I applied for a teaching job at Wellesley. I didn't even get called for an interview (quite understandable given my thin vita at the time); driving by the stunning campus yesterday, I felt a certain wistfulness.   Someday, somehow, I'd like to spend a year teaching at one of the single-sex Seven Sisters!

For those of you who read this post two weeks ago, I can report that on the red-eye out to Boston, I dozed rather than hunt for a chatting partner.  But last night's six-hour flight home was packed, and I -- stuffed in my customary middle seat -- did find a mate to chat with.  As we sped over the fly-over states, we covered Kabbalah;  John Paul II's "theology of the body"; the perils of start-ups in the biotech industry; the merits of Alice Munro's short stories; and the anti-feminist implications in the shift from 1940s to 1950s women's fashion.  In short, it was one of those deeply satisfying conversations that one can only have on long flights.

And a sports note: the University of Connecticut men's basketball team was on board the flight.  For the record, the head coach (Jim Calhoun, two-time winner of the national championship) sat in first class while his assistants and his players were squashed in economy.  I pitied the 6'10" young man in front of me in the window seat...

Comments

[kate.d.]

yes, you definitely need to make a return trip and spend some time in the city, because canton and the surrounding area are definitely not boston :) no offense to any cantonians out there.

and uconn! ugh. i went to umass, so there's no love lost between me and the uconn basketball team :) and that doesn't surpise me one bit about calhoun.

[Mr. Bad]

Hugo, you're surprised that because the fact that you're a man you didn't even get an interview at one of the last blatantly sexist, chauvanistic schools left in this country (i.e. Wellesley)? Come on, even you can't be that naive, can you?

"The Seven Sisters." Ah, were they the "Seven Brothers" you and other feminists would up in arms about the 'injustice' and 'sexism' of it all.

[Vacula]

Thin vita = not much on his resume =/= because he is a man

[Mr. Bad]

Heh, lots of newly-minted Ph.D.s get assistant professorships with thin vitae - at my school especially women. And many female full profs have a dismal vitae. There are a couple of words for this: Sexism, discrimination, and affirmative action.

Question: How many male profs are there at Wellesley? Is the male/female ratio comparable to the male/female ratio of Ph.D. grads for the various disciplines? If not, Wellesley is discriminating on the basis of sex based on the standard for gender-based discrimination these days.

But apparently this is only applied when women are underrepresented.

[evil_fizz]

Because clearly "not a particularly competitive candidate" is equivalent to "victim of discrimination".

[Hugo]

Oh for Pete's sake. I applied for the post at a time when I was still ABD, had one tiny publication and a couple of little conference papers to my credit, and the position was not in my general field of expertise. Plenty of men teach at all-women's colleges; the fact that I wasn't called for an interview does not reflect poorly on Wellesley, but rather on my unimpressive qualifications.

[Kristen from MA]

Vassar is coed, and has been for quite some time.

[Hugo]

Indeed, Kristen, that's why I wrote "single-sex Seven Sisters" -- not as a redundancy, but to make it clear I'd be intrigued by teaching at a single-sex institution.

And FWIW, my mom is a proud alumna of Vassar, class of 1959!