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UD’s First Noble Truth:

To be well-treated is as unnerving as to be badly treated.

When you call room service at the Inn at Harvard, the person who answers says, “Good morning, Professor Soltan!”

The bed you’re lying on has gold-wrapped chocolates on it and is big enough to share with, at the very least, the cheating contingent of the Harvard basketball team.

Two nights ago, UD left her massive bed for a spanking new in-the-round lecture hall down the street, where Harvey Mansfield spoke about science, non-science, wisdom, and damn hippies. UD liked the talk, but as an old hippie disliked the claim that hippies are anti-scientific. “Hippies,” UD informed Mansfield later as they headed for his car, “are very serious about empirical science. Especially chemistry.”

The walled garden in front of Mansfield’s house has curved paths of ivies and rhodies and liriopes — all lit with white lights. This was a fine house with a Harvard-heavy crowd, but any anxiety UD might have felt about the snoot-factor lifted as soon as she began chatting with this genial, funny group. Several Straussians were there, all of them perfectly happy to try to explain this thing UD‘s been hearing about since her high school boyfriend, David Kosofsky, began describing it in 1968.

Margaret Soltan, September 22, 2012 12:22PM
Posted in: Sport

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2 Responses to “UD’s First Noble Truth:”

  1. Van L. Hayhow Says:

    ESPECIALLY Chemistry.

  2. Mr Punch Says:

    Yeah, I read some Strauss about then. I concluded that (1) he was either the smartest guy ever or a complete fool, (2) I couldn’t decide definitively, (3) but the odds were very, very heavily on one side.

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