This vaguely reminds me of Zhuangzi’s response to a minister who was afraid that his position would be filled by Zhuangzi himself:

“In the South there is a bird. It is called yuan-ch’u. Have you heard of it? This yuan ch’u starts from the southern ocean and flies to the northern ocean. During its whole journey it perches on no tree save the sacred Wo-tung, eats no fruit save that of the Persian Lilac, drinks only at the Magic Well. It happened that an owl that had got hold of a rotting carcass of a rat looked up as this bird flew by, and terrified lest the yuan ch’u should stop and snatch at the succulent morsel, it screamed, “Shoo! Shoo!” And now I am told that you are trying to “shoo” me off from this precious Ministry of yours”

…personal attacks today just don’t have that same “zing” that they did in Zhuangzi’s age, that’s for sure. Taoists aren’t competitive, but they do know how to burn someone.

There’s nothing like zinging someone indirectly via a story, that’s for sure!

How are you doing, Will? What’s new? Are you still looking into graduate schools? I feel a bit out of date on your progress.

CP-

Busy, but not too bad, actually. Right now I’m trying to get everything in order (read: apostille’d) to teach ESL in Korea, which will be a good adventure for the family and help pay off any and all school loans I accumulated prior to going to grad school. I’m reading a lot, studying for the GRE, and rolling around different grad school options right now……all of which is crammed around an 8 month old.

Sloane and the wife are doing well, besides a bit of crankiness here and there, raising an 8 month old isn’t too difficult. She absolutely refuses to crawl, choosing to roll everywhere she wants. In fact, she’s going to start walking before she ever crawls–we’ve found her pulled up, standing in her crib the last few nights. She gets up there, and then cries because she can’t figure out how to get down. Or, as I suspect, just wants us to see what she’s accomplished. Either way, I’ve *really* got to find the small, single-use odd-sized Allen wrench that came with our crib in order to lower it.

Shoot me an email when you get back into town, we’ll catch up. Sarah and I have been diligently following your “travel blog” but would love to hear stories over lunch or something. Let me know.

I’ll be posting more here too…I’ve somehow neglected reading this blog for a while now, and there’s some really interesting stuff going on here too…

-Will

Will

Korea? That’s really exciting — and a fantastic idea. I think we should get together when I get back. We’ll be back on July 2nd. I’ll need some jet-lag time, but after that, let’s figure something out to catch up and to talk about your upcoming adventures!