Institutionalized

I don't want this blog to become "Things I Saw on My Morning Run," but this story is worth re-telling, as long as you enjoy dull stories with no plot and no resolution--in short, if you liked "Moby Dick."

Somewhere in the wastelands south of campus, there lurks something called the Institute for Advanced Study. Imagine a university. Now subtract the students. The Institute plucks the keenest minds from around the nation and gives them complete freedom to write, read, and above all think. No pressures, no responsibilities. Intellectual nirvana. Past residents have included Albert Einstein and...do you really need more than that? If you do: Robert Oppenheimer, John von Neumann, Paul Dirac, George Kennan.

I set out to find this academic Shangri-La. My first attempt ended in failure; I drifted onto a golf course and got shooed away by the Spackler-esque groundskeeper. The next ten minutes were spent circling a residential neighborhood. As I puffed along, keys jangling in my pocket, I prayed that no housewife would mistake me a vagrant and call the cops. That's happened to me enough times already.

Up Oppenheimer Lane and down Panofsky Street, along Flexner Road and across Von Neumann Avenue--as you can see, the Institute is very proud of its alums. But where was the damned building? At one point I wandered down a gravel path and stumbled on a rusty tractor. Had I somehow run all the way back to North Carolina?

Thirty minutes passed. Time to head back. Not willing to give up, I detoured down a gated-off greenway. Then...could it be...it was! Through a gap in the trees I spotted the Institute's clock tower. Take it from me--it is a very lovely building. Should you ever find yourself in south Jersey with nothing to do, might as well stop by there. Me, I pledge to work there someday. Hopefully not as a janitor.