from a good whistler

[email composed 24 September 2001]

Hello everybody,
I've been very busy with work--no, really; I can't believe it either, but, hey, it was bound to happen eventually. Next weekend is the last dragon boating tournament of the season, up in San Francisco. After that I'm going to Reno for a few days, constituting the first real vacation I've taken in the two years I've had my current job. Maybe after that I'll get a more proper message out.

In the meantime, I'll offer the following passage from J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (which I've been reading), as Holden's old English teacher, Mr. Antolini, quotes a psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Stekel:
"...'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he want to live humbly for one.'"


p.s. Yeah, Antolini turns out to be an alcoholic pedophile, but let's not judge the message by the messenger.