As a preface to this installment of the Apathetic Professor,
I’d like to point out what I and a select few of my colleagues noticed after I
decided on the name of the new blog. In
the interest of literary cleanliness, I opted to not include the “The” in the
URL of this new creation, hence, the website now simply reads “apatheticprofessor.blogspot.com”
which, as you’ve all no doubt noticed, seems to read “a pathetic professor.” While there may be many of my former and
current students who wholeheartedly agree with this inadvertent self-evaluation,
I found it to be a stroke of unintended genius that underscores both my lack of
instructional skills and my lax attitude towards life in general. Damn, I’m good.
Enough with the pleasantries! Of the books I read, nearly all of them are
non-fiction. In fact, I view fiction through
the same lens as Donald Trump views climate change: it doesn’t interest me
because it never happened. My few forays
into fiction include The Godfather
(which closely reflects the actual Mafioso
culture), Dr. Zhivago (which I’ve
purchased but have yet to read), and Rush Limbaugh’s The Way Things Ought To Be, which I read in college and can
therefore chalk it up to free-spirited literary experimentation. Hey, I never smoked the weed or drank to
excess so it’s all I’ve got in the way of my “wild college days.”
One form of non-fiction I really enjoy is reading “A Day in
the Life Of…” articles on notable people in the world of business or sports. I am fascinated with the mundane daily
goings-on of those who are normally inaccessible to common folk such as me. So, after some interesting travels two weeks
ago, I thought I’d offer you a glimpse into the fascinating world of mortuary
science education.
The majority of my students are online and, per our national
accreditation standards, they must each be visited at the funeral home in which
they’ll be receiving instruction. With
roughly 100 students in the program at any one time, this affords me the
opportunity to get out of my office on a regular basis. Indeed, as I type this blog, I’m sitting in a
hotel by the Pittsburgh International Airport after visiting a student in West
Virginia today. Interestingly enough, my
first daytime trip through this beautiful state felt like I was driving onto
the set of The Deer Hunter: low, gloomy, overcast skies; abandoned factories still
standing as a testament to prosperity long past; small homes tucked into the
hillside, possibly inhabited by coal and steel workers still longing for their halcyon
days. It was simultaneously sad and fascinating. Incidentally, if you’ve never seen The Deer
Hunter, you’re a loser.
The most interesting aspect of my trip earlier this month
was the dichotomy of the locales in which my students lived: Kentucky and New
York City. On Tuesday, I flew into
Louisville and, as that airport is the hub for all UPS operations, got some titillating
footage of their fleet of jets arriving and departing. (Note: Follow me on Instagram if you like
airplanes, stupid memes, and mildly disturbing videos.) I jumped in a rental car and headed south out
of Louisville towards the heart of central Kentucky. As I cruised down the winding two-lane
highway, the first thing that struck me was the amount of trash generated by each
household. I’m not talking two or three
of those big trash can’s worth, I’m talking a working model of the Himalayas at
the end of each driveway! I can generate
a lot of refuse in a week, what with all the Cosmic Brownie boxes, empty Diet Pepsi cases, and dirty Q-Tips, but Holy Mother of Colonel Sanders, these
folks throw out a lot of shit! By
contrast, I enjoyed the gentle rolling hills and 19th century
architecture that seemed to propel me back to the glory days of moonshinin' and
banjo-picking on the front porch (how many of you just thought of Ned Beatty?) For a moment, I even felt like I was driving
in the General Lee!
Let’s move ahead two days: I’m on a plane out of Des Moines
bound for Newark, NJ to visit a student who will be working at a funeral home
in New York. As the plane approaches
the runway, I look to my left and see Lady Liberty thrusting her torch skyward; I
see the majestic Manhattan skyline, dominated by the gleaming brilliance of One
World Trade Center; I then look to my right and see MetLife Stadium, the
hulking monolith of mediocrity inhabited by the New York Jets. A dichotomy within this tale of dichotomies is
New York and New Jersey. Now I’m not
saying New Jersey is a dingy shithole, but New Jersey is kind of a dingy shithole.
Airports are often reflections of the communities they serve and Newark
Airport is no different: it, too, is a dingy shithole whose last update was,
and I’m only guessing here, completed in 1983.
After beckoning my Uber driver with my nifty Uber app, I’m
off to New York City feeling like a trendy Manhattanite with a manageable coke
habit. I see the George Washington
Bridge and watch the signs for Yankee Stadium and Queens whiz by my window as
my Uber driver offers a captivating description of daily life in the Big Apple. An hour later, I arrive at a Jewish funeral
home in the Bronx. And there’s Reason #4
why I love my job: I’m at a Secessionist-era funeral home in Kentucky on
Tuesday and an Orthodox Jewish mortuary in the Bronx on Thursday. How’s that for “A Week in the Life”? As most of you know, when an Orthodox Jew dies,
they are often buried in Israel. The
funeral home I visited will routinely respond to a death in the morning and
have the deceased on an El-Al Airlines 747 bound for Israel by 6 PM that
same day for an overnight flight.
The next morning, a car will meet the flight at the airport in Tel-Aviv
and take the deceased directly to the cemetery for burial. If you want to know more, sign up for my
classes!
Now, here I am in gloomy Pittsburgh writing these words and
preparing for a journey to Richmond, VA tomorrow morning. Another week in the life of a mortuary
science instructor…
Peace,
Travis
