Meet Prof. Dr. von Igelfeld

This may be my last fog-tendrils-in-forest photo for a while:


Because spring is here. Pink-blooming plum trees dot the neighborhoods, bright yellow daffodils and forsythia draw the eye, demure red and pink camellia blossoms decorate dark green hedges. Alder pollen threatens to saturate the air, alas, as well.

And now I really must share a passage from the very amusing novel Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith. In it, our hero, the philologist Professor Dr. von Igelfeld, receives a letter from a tiresome colleague.

It was a thin, dejected-looking envelope, much tattered by its journey. Indeed, on one corner it appeared that some animal, possibly a dog, had bitten it, leaving small tooth holes. In another corner, the paper had split, revealing a single sheet of greying parchment within. Von Igelfeld turned it over and saw the address of the sender, typed erratically across the back flap: Professor J.G.K.L. Singh. The name made his heart sink: J.G.K.L. Singh of Chandighar, author of Dravidian Verb Shifts.

Impulsively, von Igelfeld tossed the letter into his wastepaper bin. It had clearly met with near disaster on its trip to Germany, von Igelfeld thought; had the dog swallowed it, then it would never have arrived at all. If he threw it away now, then he was merely fulfilling its manifest destiny. ( Keep reading )