I am a senior. I have completed the senior thesis process. I have nearly completed my final undergraduate classes. In a mere thousand words, I will have completed my tenure as a columnist for The Amherst Student. Although Amherst College frequently reminds me (now and forever) that my financial responsibility to Amherst is unending, Amherst has (nearly) fulfilled its educational responsibility to me.
Imagine, for a moment, that for the first time in your Amherst career, you are visiting the Mead Art Museum on your own accord. For some, this will be a fresh memory, while for others such an imaginative feat might be a near impossibility. Imagine that no class brought you to view sketches or still-lives as source materials for a project, no visiting family members brought you along on their touristic explorations of Amherst and the surrounding area and there are no Zumbyes singing among the artwork as you meander the Mead’s galleries.
Two weeks ago, Amherst College bought us a Festival of Ice, complete with fire-blowers, ice-carvers and (what I believe to be) the yummiest Hamantaschen ever tri-cornered. To advertise for the event, a large ice sculpture of a snowflake was placed in front of Val, and Amherst’s Februaries are so cold that the sculpture lasted several days before the sun’s mild rays took their toll.
The difficulty in booking an act for the Super Bowl Half-Time Show is finding a performer whom 108 million American viewers will not find controversial.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
Some people watch the Olympics for the sports.
Like Mitt Romney, I like Big Bird.
That’s not to say that I like watching “Sesame Street.” Actually, I find watching “Sesame Street” to be an infernal activity; time is a scarce resource, and time spent in my adult life without investment or pleasure is time poorly spent. Nevertheless, “Sesame Street” educates, engrosses and pacifies young children, as it once did for me, and if I could choose between a world with and a world without “Sesame Street,” I’d choose “with.”
