But still, lots of European imports. Recently, however, something has happened. The meeting had been called to devise an anthology for teaching literature from Calabria to Connemara, and to sort out the differences, quite sizable as it turned out, in methods of lecturing and grading papers. The EU, started humbly enough as the European Steel and Coal Commission, with the aim of building connections between the combatants of World War II and thus preventing a reemergence of the vengeance and resentment that erupted at the end of World War I, had more recently begun to conceive of its unity more in cultural and spiritual terms. When conversation turns to the spirit, I check for my wallet.
Spirit always costs money, or worse, blood.
My suspicions deepened when I reflected on my own role at the meeting. You don't have to be Foucault to suspect an exclusionary, boundary-defining motive behind that invitation. Still, as a card-carrying Europhile, I was expected at least to smile upon the proceedings, to bless the club that had invited me in, albeit on a guest pass. Well, I may be a Europhile, but I am also a midwesterner. I have picked corn, baled hay, driven a tractor.