We’re about to enter our residency, some of us more well-coiffed than others. Twice a year, the Hamline students and faculty gather on campus for ten days of workshops, lectures, and lots of great companionship. My husband tells me there’s a famously untranslatable German word–gemütlichkeit–the feeling of warm-heartedness and companionship that one feels for one’s fellows, friends and strangers alike, while drinking gigantic steins of beer in the beer hall. Change “gigantic steins of beer” for “epically bad food” and there you have Hamline. It’s a magnificent thing to be amongst other writers.
Residency is something like the first few days after you’ve been turned into a vampire–it’s hard to focus on anything else. So the Inkpot might get quiet for the next week, or very weird, or filled with postings from Ron about how nice the weather is in California. I will try to file some reports, and I’ll just apologize in advance for everything I say. Meanwhile, I’m getting my stuff together to go work in the Hamline library–I’ve got a lecture to write–and I raise a cafeteria-style, institutional-Diet Coke-filled glass to my fellows. See you soon.
