GOODBYE MINNESOTA

For nine days I will leave your thirty degree weather and snowy layers, your windchills and gloomy gray skies. I will say adios to long pants and sweaters and search deep under my bed for the bin of swimsuits and tank tops. I will dig out my flip flops.

There will be no scholarly articles on Mary Wilkins Freeman where I'm going. Just yesterday I returned my great stack of overdue library books so I no longer receive threatening letters from the ladies of the MSU library. In their place are novels, short stories, and a memoir I've been waiting to get to. There is nothing academic about these books.

I will trade in buffalo wings for lobster tail and prime rib and all the buffets I could ever want. I will weigh myself this morning and see where I'm at when I return.

I will write things that don't include words like prescriptive roles, identity, community, trajectory, and negotiation. I will not be edited.

I think internet time is somewhere around five dollars a minute on the boat. Phone lines are eight dollars a minute. Needless to say I'll wait until I come home to post pictures.