Off to Cowpoke State

I've been preparing for campus interviews rather than blogging. I know; what could possess me to make such a warped decision?

Thursday morning I fly to the land of big skies, the land that A River Runs Through, for my first interview, a three-day affair for some reason. Cowpoke State wants me to have a meal or a half-hour meeting with absolutely everyone associated with the English Department, teach a class on Twelfth Night, go sightseeing, look for houses, have two dinners and a reception, and give a presentation of my research. They're nothing if not thorough. So I'm cancelling two days of class and preparing to visit what I hear is "the hippest little city in the Big Square States."

That's a phrase that has a pleasant, Gilbert-and-Sullivan sort of scansion to it, even if it's not true. One can easily imagine a chorus of petticoat-clad, deck-swabbing Japanese bureaucrats singing "The Hippest Little City in the Big Square States."