Julia Spicher Kasdorf
Cognitive Dissonance at a Major Research University
Once, rushing to dinner with a visiting poet and some donors, I was hit
by the odor of charred meat, then the sight of young men in camouflage
and boots, holding rifles beside a grill. Misplaced bar-b-cue? No,
those were real guns! I mentioned it to the hotel management student
behind the desk at the inn. No firearms on campus! he snapped grabbing
a phone, but the campus police told him it’s just the ROTC guys guarding
the Lion Shrine before the Michigan game. Once, a faculty wife seated
beside me at a donor dinner told me she works in a lab testing non-lethal
weapons. Her lips matched her shell pink sheath. Non-lethal weapons?
Wounded troops make more trouble for the enemy than their dead.
My mind went to the time I sliced a corner off my knuckle grating slaw:
pain, blood almost impossible to stop, supper delayed. Best restaurant
in town, homecoming weekend, she giggled, Not really table talk, I guess,
we test them on cells in petri dishes, not mice, which would be inhumane.