The Goddess of Gumbo

Well, I declare. And I use those words with the inflec­tion of gen­er­a­tions of South­ern aunts and mamas and grand­mas echo­ing in my ears: “Well, Ah dee-clare!” Can you hear the musi­cal trip­ping off the tongue? Two soft trochees, drip­ping with won­der … and scorn? And what is it that has caused this retreat from the …

It’s become clear to me over the last few days that, sud­denly, with­out warn­ing, and for no appar­ent rea­son, I’ve turned a cor­ner. Last year I was totin’ that barge and liftin’ that bale in a job that could only be described as the most ghastly of intel­lec­tual sweat­shops. This year… Well, there’s only one …

I’ve got­ten a sum­mer job offer–and that’s very good news, given the fact that being “free­way fac­ulty” means I don’t have an aca­d­e­mic home after May 22. It’s a job that I might not have taken were it not for my new-found seren­ity. Nor­mally, the very thought of sum­mer joblessness–of any joblessness–would have thrown me into …

As a kid, I loved–I mean absolutely adored–Japan­ese daikaiju eiga: mon­ster movies and tele­vi­sion shows. I, of course, arrived too late to the party of the orig­i­nal Godzilla, released in 1954, but I sat riv­eted at the spec­ta­cle of Destroy All Mon­sters, fea­tur­ing the shudder-inducing tri­fecta of Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra, in 1968–my appetite for such …