Dispatches from Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University: On Tenacity

by Oronte Churm, an obvious pseudonym Ceci n’est pas une histoire d’pigeon. One night in Hanoi, before official U.S. rapprochement with Vietnam, Frenchy and I were in the Piano Restaurant and Bar awaiting the house special—Roasted Pigeon With Five Tastes. Frenchy wanted the dish, he said, because he didn’t think they could do it. We were exhausted from a month of backpacking, and I was sick with what I can only describe as sinking spells, brought on by the strange rain-mist in northern Vietnam the French called crachin, which my dead grandmother would have called “pneumonia weather.” Our brains were […]