Four reasons why working in a university is the best job ever....

In the past two days, I:

1) lunched with and heard a talk by John Crockett, former diplomat and cultural attache in Italy (and other places) where he was a neighbor of Nobel-Prize-winner Eugenio Montale, where he brought Allen Ginsberg to meet Montale, and at whose apartment Thomas Mann took a nap, and that's just the beginning of his stories;

2) heard Steve Forbes give a lecture on financial policy;

3) read selections from Ava Gardner: Touches of Venus, as well as from Eliot and Tennyson in a poetry marathon, as part of CCSU's celebration of National Poetry Month;

4) and graded papers by and conferenced with students from China, Korea, Poland, Ghana, Colombia, Venezuela, and Egypt.

That's a job to have.