Dear Earth, You might remember me. I went away for a little while but stopped by for a summer before dropping off your face again sometime in late August. You'll be glad to hear I left campus for Fall Break this past weekend, so I was inadvertently exposed to your brothers and sisters, the elements: wind chill, world news, urban life-all those things I usually don't have to make much of an effort to avoid.
I was stuck in line at the airport when I first realized you've gone through substantial changes while I was away. My curling iron set off a bomb alert, so I had plenty of time to think about your new look, as I stood off to the side with a pack of girls getting frisked for smuggling mascara past security.
For starters, you're not as green as you once were. I ordered a slice of spinach pizza on the way to my gate, but it came out as naked as a minority at a security checkpoint. Turns out unlike most of the Great Hall's food failures, the disappearance of spinach from the make-your-own salad bar was not strictly a Duke Dining disaster. As is to be expected with most other kinds of calamities, we can stick it to the state of California.
Speaking of the miserable state of celebrity-status politicians, conditions seem particularly bleak for the latest of disgraced Republicans. I found a newspaper stand that offered only two things: kid-sized candy bars and front-page Foley coverage, a combination that might have cracked a smile out of Foley himself. He may be in deep for his dirty chats with teenage pages, but it's not like the former co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus can't appreciate a little irony.
Sitting in a bucket seat, filling in a crossword on the recent compassionate conservative crises, I made an earth-shattering discovery. I don't mean to use your name in vain. But it would be easy for the Republicans to win back the religious right and moral middle, if they agreed to weed out everyone whose last name ends in "y"-as in Foley, Ney, DeLay. The pattern of corruption is no coincidence; we must acknowledge here the workings of something greater than ourselves.
A higher power is perhaps what Bush meant to invoke when he likened Iraq to a "comma" in that run-on sentence we call history. There's speculation that the heartless simile was actually an attempt to echo the mantra of the United Church of Christ/ wacky Gracie Allen: "Never place a period where God has placed a comma."
The connection is really not too much of a stretch-though I'm personally more inclined to believe the comma quote was designed to quash rumors that his thoughts mostly consist of question marks.
But in any case, his critics need to give the guy a break. If history tells us anything, our president can't be held accountable for his grammar or his wild metaphors. A Bushism is kind of like an overbooked flight; it's nobody's fault, just everybody's problem.
I felt a little queasy at this point in heavy contemplation, but there's no jumping off the plane when it starts rolling down the runway. By the time I finally thought to try perspective and look outside my window, the plane was well above the clouds and hitting turbulence. I imagine this is what it's like for those Republicans who have only just noticed how well the White House handles national security.
Jealous of Iraq's updated status as a breathy punctuation mark, North Korea has called it quits as unnamed middle child on Bush's axis of evil. Apparently, it's got missiles and west coast range, which means at best an effective solution for our infected spinach greens.
The good news is I'm back on campus now; in a few weeks, I'll have forgotten all about linguistic decline, moral decay, nuclear destruction, the Republican Party, etc. College is about getting away from the world as a means for preparing for it. Before I voluntarily begin another chapter in protective captivity, I wanted to make sure you intend to stick it out, at least until graduation forces me back down to earth. It seems safe to say it looks like hell over there, but you won't find me complaining too loudly for a few more years. Just see what you can do about the spinach thing, please; it's sort of cramping my style.
Thanks,
Standard Sophomore
Jane Chong is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every Wednesday.
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