Greetings, Brunonia! It is I, the sainted campus oddball and global traveler Josiah Carberry, professor emeritus of psycho-ceramics. If this missive reaches campus, it does so from the Black Sea by way of Kiev. I have taken quarter on a fishing trawler that sails out of the Russian port of Tuapse. The crew is on the hunt for an elusive deep-sea sturgeon known around these parts as "the Killer Beluga"; I am sifting through shards dredged up by the ship, trying to piece together a profile of the obscure Persian King Gerrymander, whose short-lived dynasty on the coast south of our position was characterized by elaborate plans to construct a city underwater.
I must say, there are times when it gets quite lonely in my sleeping bag on the deck. Yet I take comfort knowing that no matter where I might be in the world - atop Mount Everest, surfing the Great Barrier Reef, navigating the Kalihari Desert with only the stars to guide me or deciding America's next president in the old boy's club of the Electoral College - Brown is with me.
Usually, I just send a postcard to University Hall from the road, but I felt it might be important to try and reach the larger community for a change. My travels used to garner headlines from the New York Times and Yankee Magazine, but now it seems nobody's interested in a mysterious globetrotting academic from dear old Brown. I think I know why.
Don't get me wrong, I love it when you celebrate my birthday with Dionysian merriment, and I'm more than happy to let the library use my name for their catalog system and occasional fundraising. But the Carberry sandwich is an affront to my reputation as a global scholar - it's bringing me down in the eyes of the world!
Just so you don't think I'm some kind of crackpot, I'd like to make it clear that I support the idea of a double patty chicken sandwich. But my agents have informed me that the sandwich that bears my name is often rubbery, and contains a minimal percentage of actual chicken. Furthermore, they have told me that Josiah's, the eatery that bears my name, and serves the aforementioned sandwich, offers few legitimate food options, and is furthermore a den of profligacy, attracting mainly drunken misfits and gawkers.
While I am aware of the popularity of the Spicy Chicken sandwich, and tried the quesadillas during my visit to campus last year, it is not enough. My namesake, the sandwich, must have at least three patties.
Let me explain why all of this is important. I try to send postcards from wherever I am. But to be honest, I take my time as a global traveler. I've been on this trawler for the last 10 months, and scouring the Black Sea intermittently for the last decade. I became a campus celebrity because other people sent in postcards for me. First it was just Brunonians that I met in my travels, then it was every student and faculty member at Brown who ever drove south of Westerly. But my stock seems to have shrunk in recent years, and methinks the Carberry's the culprit. The sandwich, I mean. While the notion of a double patty chicken sandwich always sounds smashing to incoming students, spending night after night at Josiah's soon disperses the novelty. My popularity, for better or worse, is at this point linked to the sandwich, and the sandwich in turn is in desperate need of an image makeover.
By making the Carberry a three-patty affair, Brown will raise my profile, and associate me with the conspicuous, some might even say unhealthy, decadence with which I have tried to live my life. The Carberry will be the most chicken-filled sandwich north of the Mason-Dixon, a mandatory stop on the Admission Office tour. Brown students will remember the name Josiah Carberry with pride as they move on to become kooky explorers, Morgan Stanley drones, VH1 personalities, burned-out good guys and full-time WOOFers (Workers On an Organic Farm).
With my mark seared with chicken flesh into their minds, a new crop of students will take to the streets of Munich and Buenos Aires, Rome and Nairobi, Hong Kong and Katmandu, and send postcards from me once more, allowing my legend to grow as I complete my important research in solitude.
I gave my last lecture at Brown in 1927. That night, in the University's buttery, I ate three lobsters, and a quail stuffed with crabmeat.
I want Brown students to remember me, but I also want them to share in a little piece of what Brown gave me in the years before my travels began. So please, add a patty to the Carberry sandwich.
Josiah Carberry will leave Russia for Ulaan-Bator next year.
