This poem is for all the men
Who have sacrificed their time
To explain my research to me.
In train stations and hallways
At 1am drunk at a party
And over bad coffee after a presentation.

Grace Krause, “Thinking in the Open”

It’s been a slow news week here in Batavia, Ohio, the taint of America. Apparently the Mueller report (kind of, sort of) came out, and liberals everywhere achieved an unbelievable tantric orgasm nearly two years in the making. Or not. Meanwhile, our fair-haired boy Mueller, now unemployed, is trying out for the role of Renault in the upcoming remake of Casablanca.

What else did we learn? What else did we learn, indeed. Science tells us that we start turning into our mothers at exactly 33 years of age. (No wonder Jesus voluntarily gave himself up to the authorities.) I have this beat by a mile, because I started turning into my mom at 17. (I started watching a lot of Law & Order.) I suspect this study was conducted by the same scientist who declared once on NPR that “you don’t actually need to wash a bra.”

Meanwhile, every woman in academia can relate to Grace Krause’s poem, “Thinking in the Open.” You spend 10 years studying inclusionary zoning policies and then an unreasonably self-confident dude at a Communist Party BBQ who studies bullfrog farts proceeds to explain your area of expertise to you at excruciating length. We at ToM salute you, Grace Krause. Would that everyone got “a PhD in unemployment” — the world would be a better place.

And a closing thought, from friend-of-the-blog Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who is turning 100:

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as 
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’ 
Yes
but then right in the middle of it 
comes the smiling
mortician

From Pictures of the Gone World (1955)

Here is our weekly round-up of the very best of the very worst:

• Thinking in the Open (Grace Krause)
• Warren Buffett Hates It. AOC Is for It. A Beginner’s Guide to Modern Monetary Theory (Bloomberg)
• Marie Cochran on being black and Appalachian: I Pledge Allegiance to Affrilachia (Rewire)
• The African-American who got stuck in the USSR (BBC)
• Overlooked No More: Elizabeth Peratrovich, Rights Advocate for Alaskan Natives (NYT)
• Dow falls 460 points as US recession indicator flashes red (CNN)
• You Start Turning Into Your Mother At Age 33, According To Science (Scary Mommy)
• Danger of motivatiogenesis in interdisciplinary work (Theory, Evolution, and Games Group)
• ‘I Can Exist Here’: On Gender Identity, Some Colleges Are Opening Up (NPR)
• Waffle House Vistas (Micah Cash)
• Ahead Of His 100th Birthday, A Reading Of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s ‘I Am Waiting’ (NPR)
• When your thesis adviser advises you to quit (Science)
• Levi’s CEO: Don’t put your jeans in the freezer (CNN)