Dear friends,
In a little over 72 hours I will be presenting the lecture portion of my summer demo to my classmates at the New School. To that end, I will be off to the New York Public Library Main Reading Room to see what I need to do to access the rare cookbook collection. I have the nagging feeling that the answer will be “you need to make an appointment, present us a detailed list of what you need [a nice trick considering that I don’t have a catalog of the collection], give us a list of 20 people who can vouch that you’re not wasting our precious time, and let us swab of the inside of your cheek. We also reserve the right to perform a full body-cavity search if we still find your intentions too frivolous, or if we’re just in the mood for a cheap laugh.”
So in the event that I disappear for a bit, it’s not due to blogbandonment, indifference, lack of love or incipient suicide. (Well, maybe I should withhold my judgment on that last one until I see what my research yields.) I’m just at the library, walking into my future.
One bit of news: the Egg Board publicity juggernaut is starting to kick in. I got a lovely letter from a woman at the AEB, asking me to confirm some details of my CV so that she can make a PowerPoint presentation about me to present at a conference. She has also asked me to check their website for their interview with last year’s winner, so that I know what to anticipate when they interview me next month.I know this is all information that she got from me, but somehow when other people say it, it sounds so much more impressive than it is. In college I spent a summer in Moscow and Leningrad on a travel scholarship. I did not acquit myself on this trip as well as I should have, but as far as the Egg Board is concerned, it’s just cool that I was there at all. Dear friends, I don’t mean to protest too much, and I know that I am, but I have this nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that either I have a doppelganger, a much more competent doppelganger who is the actual recipient of this fellowship, or else the Egg Board has somehow made a mistake. Dear Egg Board, all this lovely fuss, are you sure I’m the girl for you? Are you sure you don’t want a do-over?