So after years of trying to find ways to justify my line of work to the representatives of society asking me why it is that they had keep paying for my arcane and diletante intellectual pursuits, I, the perenial café frequenter, the lazy eternal student, found myself tasting the sweet savour of mild relevance. One papal pronouncement, one pontiffical lecture and suddenly I had something to say that people found semi-interesting. It all started with my students. Normally shy and in a close embrace with Morpheus, they suddenly had something to ask. They felt that maybe they were taking a course that offered more than lectures with pretty pictures. Then I read the papal lecture and at the invitation of a fellow academic, I published a comment on the pope's speech on the net. Interest was generated. I mean, let us not fool ourselves, interest was generated mostly among the tiny circle of people seeking arcane knowledge like mine, yet I tasted for a brief second the power of the sirens. Suddenly I was contacted by a fellow running a radio show out of New York and interested in interviewing me. The affable graduate student was now a professor and then somehow an authority on something. How to deal with this. Well gloating is one response, which is then followed by an intense desire to hide and avoid looking the self in the mirror. The Narcisistic tendencies present in everyone of us seeking to stand before classrooms were jumping up and down like teenage hormones. The desire for public contact had to be nipped in the bud. And it was. The sober me emerged and decided to impose a curfew on the Narcisist. At least that is what I tell myself...till FOX news calls and wishes to talk to me. Till that happens I am off hiking where conveniently I cannot be reached by phone and cannot be interviewed.