13 March 09
A Different Kind of Detection
Oxbridge attracts a particular kind of American — the academically-inclined if not outright academic, often more than ordinarily anglophilic, and, if male, spreading a bit (okay, a lot) above the beltline and sporting a bow tie. (If you’ve read any David Lodge, Maurice Zapp, though not in fact at Oxbridge though certainly wishing he were, rather than at my alma mater Rummidge/Birmingham, is the perfect portrait.) My many years away from Cambridge — 20, at this point — and my now more than 10 years away from Harvard — where this kind of person occurs in some profusion — have dulled my sensitivity to the type. To be fair, there aren’t many of them in Davis. (Thank God. Davis is, as I have said elsewhere, a cross between Berkeley and North Dakota, and such types are ridiculed in Berkeley and nonexistent in North Dakota. But I digress.)
I ran into one the other night, though, at, of all places, the Davis Knitting Group. A late-middle-aged gent expertly unwinding a skein (hank, if you’re American) of undyed Shetland yarn (horrified there was so much — gasp — color on the knitting needles around the table, not like in Yurp), expostulating on what a backwater Davis was; how when he lived in London he could go to a different play every night; how he hadn’t unpacked all his stuff yet (he owns a ball winder and swifter); how he had taught at Oxford. (Ears prick up; you don’t “teach” at Oxford.) Apparently a doctor, though interested in the intersection of music, philosophy, and the brain. (I thought oh, maybe an Oliver Sacks wannabe?)
My bullshit detector, already on amber alert, started screaming loudly the minute he pronounced Nuffield “Noofield” and I’m afraid I rather rudely concentrated on my yarnovers and knit-two-togethers rather than engage him in a lengthy discourse about London, Oxford, Cambridge, and why Europe is more interesting than Davis. (If it’s theatre you want, buddy, you should have moved to New York.) He turned his attentions to a fascinated and more easily-impressable nurse and they gabbed for three hours about the lamentable state of American medicine.
I was startled at the vehemence of my reaction to this fairly harmless, probably lonely, and certainly rudderless old bumbler. I think it’s partly because I finally, really, feel very protective of Davis. It’s my home now. I have had it with snobs, particularly American ones of the Oxbridgephilic kind. (I’ll make an exception, I think, for Yarn Snobs, but that’s another blog post.)
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It was interesting to read that Davis is where you seem to have set your roots. I guess I can say the same about us, and Småland. Though we are sometimes tempted to move elsewhere it never seems to happen! Little did we know when we sat drinking coke on that burning hot marble table in Madrid all those years ago just where we were going to end up calling `home`
Ah, yes, the hot marble table.
(It was PEPSI, Jennifer. The twisted bottles. Remember….)
I think my roots can be reset but for now, don’t diss my town…
And I stuck like a cut thistle to Berkeley, after getting here by accident. I’ve come to be amused by the beef byproduct that gets spread so freely about my hometown, often enough by people who’ve never set foot here.
I’ve always fly kind of <i>sisterly</i> about Davis. I liked the place the first time I saw it, and since I’ve had a few hort mentors who’d studied there, I’ve come to like it even more since. Having friends there obviously puts a deeper patina on the feeling.
I am sure, however, that if I had to live there in summer I’d melt into a protoplasmic puddle.
Oh. I suspect the prototype for your pretender was T.S. Eliot. How on earth did you manage not to dissolve in giggles at him?
Oxbridge has some beautiful buildings, great museums and libraries. But for all the things important to my quality of life (friendliness of people, cyclability, and most importantly, birding), Davis wins hands down. It’s the only college town where I’ve felt like a citizen rather than an academic on the fringes of city life.
Ron: thank you for your sisterliness. Summer is indeed hard but nothing — NOTHING — like Pennsylvania’s, let alone Arkansas’.
Richard: thank you. Very well put. Hope you settle in Athens just as happily.
What is the verb for teaching, there?
Ach, be gentle! I’ve been there, trading on the fading glamor cast by big academic names. You don’t start trading on that till you don’t have much else to trade on :-)
But yes, I know, my patience for that sort of whining about the fact that one place isn’t another has dwindled to near zero too. It’s true, Davis isn’t London: who expected it to be?
Pica, You may recall I made my way from Davis to Montana to Harvard, and I remember being horrified my first day on the job to be told to “call a cab” to get a letter taken across town! I’m glad you like it there; it’s always my favorite spot to visit when I’m in CA.
Dale: the chap probably has no idea I was doing anything other than knitting. Sue: nice to see you here. Yes. My realization was sort of startling but I was pleased to have discovered this.
Huh. I wonder if “hank” is a regionalism – I’ve always called those unwound circles of yarn skeins myself.