Nova PhDs

So, Joe has washed into town, so to speak. We are now trying to find him some money in exchange for a lecture or two - what else could we do?!? He joins the 25 or so undergraduates from various New Orleans universities who have found shelter at Villanova. (For those who are in the know: a P.I.M.P. night for Joe is in the works)

Thank you, Chris and John and Farhang, for your remarks re: my defense. You asked, Chris, about my defense and about my impressions on the process: I am glad to be done, but I too am somewhat ambivalent about the significance of the whole process. For about 4 months over the summer I fretted about fine details of my readings of, for example, Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of the called subject and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics of the summoned subject . . . and none of this came up either during conversations with my committee or during my defense. I suppose I can assume I "nailed" this material, but I would have appreciated a more detailed response to what I wrote. (Now, I did receive detailed comments from several of the graduate students who volunteered to read individual chapters - and THIS response meant alot to me.)

Now that I am blurring conversation threads . . . finally: Sonja and I visited Farhang and Emily in DC last weekend. We had a good time. The area of "the district" that they live in is quite comfortable, and there are a number of nice places to eat and/or to sit and have a drink. A moment I particularly enjoyed was being greeted by the mad Iranian expatriate who owns a cafe/bar near their place, called the "Marx Cafe" ["revolutionary quisine"], with the words "Welcome Infidels!"