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The outskirts of New Haven are a world away from Sterling Library at Yale. We save a hundred dollars each, opting for the slow train to NYC. In the meantime the 24-hour Blue Star Diner sign rises up like an oil well, advertising not only the restaurant, but New Haven’s industrial parking lots with far too many empty spaces at midday. Obviously, the boundary lines between the classes aren’t merely economic. Just a passing thought of someone who saved a hundred bucks opting for the regional train with its familiar clacking rails, rather than the smooth-toned Acela. But Mao’s original idea of switching peasants from the fields & factories into classrooms, sending students out for real experience just might work here, sold as revisionist history, & marketed in a new little red book of self-help techniques in the dorms & hallowed halls with a call for social activism, voluntarism, & of course, four credits for the enterprise.
©2003 by Robert Gibbons
Robert Gibbons recently resigned his position from an academic library in Boston to pursue his writing career full time. His first full-length book, Slow Trains & Beyond: Selected Work, will be published by Samba Mountain Press, Denver, this summer.
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