Why, then, do I continue to be ignored every year by the McArthur Foundation when they hand out their so-called "Genius Grants"?
Isabel and I were driving home Tuesday afternoon from getting our flu shots when we heard the news about the Genius Grants being awarded. It was a national news program, so they wouldn't have necessarily mentioned my name the way a local news program would have. But something told me this wasn't my year -- yet again. I was short-tempered with Isabel all the way home, fully expecting the message light on the phone would not be flashing.
And I was right.
I suspect that the guy who did win the grant that was meant for me was Timothy Barrett, a paper maker and paper historian. Wow. Genius-level stuff. For the second straight year, someone who does a marginally-significant art wins over me because it happens to preserve some dying culture.
Two people from New Haven won -- Richard Prum, an orthinologist and paleontologist. Kids love dinosaurs, so he got the kid vote. Works with bord feathers, apparently. But since he's "head curator of vertebrate zoology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History," which is five minutes from our house, and which we are members of, we'll let him have one. And Mary Tinetti, who focuses on why the elderly fall and how to prevent that from happening. So I guess that's important.
Then there's Lin He, who's doing research on molecular-level stuff with cancer, and why cancer cells won't die like normal cells. So we'll give one to her.
Plus, Rackstraw Downes, an artist, who has a really cool name. Rackstraw.
That leaves, like, 20 other artists, writers, scientists, bridge engineers, and probably one or two other "historians of paper," whatever the hell that means, who won instead of me.
Where's the justice, people? Where's the love? Not a blogger among the winners.
That's it, I guess -- the McArthur people are technology-haters. Maybe when they join the 21st century, I'll get my due.
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