Live and Don't Learn

I'm still trying to come up with a name for this site. No one has given me a good suggestion yet. In deference to the address I'm calling it Me > You for now, but I expect suggestions, and good ones soon.

In other news, I changed the Institute Motto after a conversation with Chicky. The old motto was "This way to the Egress!" Which seemed not to resonate.

I picked that motto when I reran my Judas story, as poetic (I thought). In the old days of P.T. Barnum, there would be a sign in the Circus that read just that; This way to the Egress!"

I'll let Kay Randall tell it, from her article Under the Big Top." published on the University of Texas Website:

In 1841, entrepreneur extraordinaire P.T. Barnum opened a museum of oddities and immediately ran into a logistical problem. Customers came in and liked what they saw so much that they didn’t want to leave. Barnum couldn’t fit new customers into the museum.

To solve the problem, Barnum posted a sign that read “This Way to the Egress.” Most visitors, unaware that egress meant exit, eagerly walked through a door, expecting to see an animal straight out of their nightmares, and found themselves outside. To re-enter the museum, they had to relinquish another quarter.

In that little anecdote lies a lot of Americana and a nugget of what the circus means to some—ballyhoo, deception, sleight of hand, exotica, spectacle, illusion and good old American salesmanship.

You can see why I thought it a great joke and commentary on what Judas thought he was getting.

Sadly, it worked out like most of my jokes; too esoteric to be accessible, and now I've gone the way of Calvin and Hobbes. This is a punchline to one of Calvin's many misadventures where he purposely fails to learn the lesson. Hobbes's reply is wistful and shaking his head: "Live and don't learn; that's us." (The Indespensable Calvin and Hobbes, p. 190)

Maybe that should be my new title.