<\/a>
\nI’ve been re-reading Robert Palmer’s excellent Deep blues<\/cite> as one of the texts for my FYS<\/acronym> course on American roots music and just came across (again) one of my favorite lines from the book:<\/p>\n

\nI thought, oh, man, this cat is just jivin’, he ain’t goin’ to Chicago. I thought goin’ to Chicago was like goin’ out of the world.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is Muddy Waters talking about his reaction to Robert Nighthawk’s suggestion that Muddy come with him to Chicago in the 30’s and record together.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting how much things have changed, as today most Americans wouldn’t find the idea of travelling 600 miles nearly so daunting. (Of course the huge<\/em> improvements in roads and cars has a lot to do with this.) But things haven’t completely<\/em> changed. I’m often amazed by how many of our students have never been to Canada when you could darn near throw a rock to it from here. And while 30-40% of our students do some sort of international experience while they’re here, others are pretty freaked out by the idea of travelling to another country. One recent grad caught all sorts of grief from his grandmother because he had the audacity to spend a summer in SoCal on a research internship at USC, and then go to Oregon for grad school. Weird.<\/p>\n

My family has a long history of international travel and tends towards being study abroad junkies. My grandfather spent a year studying in Switzerland in the 1920’s, which included a sojourn with some buddies to North Africa wandering the Sahara in an Opel. My mom spent a summer in Vienna in the early 1950’s (while the Allies were still sharing it with the Soviets!) as one of the first Americans to go abroad with the AFS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WeatherGirl<\/a>‘s family, on the other hand, had to work up to it a bit. Her paternal grandparents grew up literally next door to each other in Manchester (UK), and when they moved to a different part of the city 12 miles away the neighborhood had a going away party<\/em>! Then her dad got all radical and married a woman from the south of England. Then she got all radical and married me and moved to the U.S.<\/p>\n

We figure Sub-Evil Boy<\/a> has to marry a martian to keep up the trend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been re-reading Robert Palmer’s excellent Deep blues as one of the texts for my FYS course on American roots music and just came across (again) one of my favorite lines from the book: I thought, oh, man, this cat is just jivin’, he ain’t goin’ to Chicago. I thought goin’ to Chicago was like … Continue reading “Like goin’ out of the world”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-travels"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-3H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":361,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2006\/07\/17\/robert-fitzgerald-candidate-for-us-senate-in-minnesota\/","url_meta":{"origin":229,"position":0},"title":"Robert Fitzgerald, candidate for U.S. Senate in Minnesota","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"17 Jul 06","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the recurring features of small town summer parades in the mid-west is politics, and yesterday's Prairie Pioneer Days parade here in Morris must have had 8-10 different politicians ranging from the local sherriff up to candidates for U.S. Senate. Included in this motley crew was Robert Fitzgerald, who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Robert Fitzgerald, candidate for U.S. Senate","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/60\/192287583_e598738748_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":333,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2006\/04\/01\/it-is-done\/","url_meta":{"origin":229,"position":1},"title":"It is done","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"1 Apr 06","format":false,"excerpt":"Well I feel like crying but you know the tears won't come down. That's from a wonderful Muddy Waters song (\"My home is the delta\"), but it smells like an old blues couplet to me. Regardless of its origin, it says a lot about the last few days. As mentioned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Just before leaving (4 of 4)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/51\/120152275_1bad5b067e_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":879,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2008\/11\/05\/what-an-amazing-night\/","url_meta":{"origin":229,"position":2},"title":"What an amazing night!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"5 Nov 08","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm exhausted and am going to bed, but it's been a truly amazing night. McCain was gracious in a (crushing) defeat, and Obama was humble, inclusive, and inspiring in his acceptance. It was in so many ways a night to be proud of the U.S. after so many years of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":854,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2008\/07\/04\/weeeeeere-back\/","url_meta":{"origin":229,"position":3},"title":"Weeeeee’re back!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"4 Jul 08","format":false,"excerpt":"We're back in Morris, Minnesota, sleeping in our own beds for the first time in 10 months! We arrived late Tuesday after a long, but generally uneventful trip. (Well, uneventful if we ignore a bit of a rush transferring in Chicago that contributed to WeatherGirl leaving her iPods on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1327,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2010\/07\/11\/massive-road-trip-days-3-6-oops\/","url_meta":{"origin":229,"position":4},"title":"Massive road trip, days 3-6 (oops)","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"11 Jul 10","format":false,"excerpt":"Wow - lack of internet and the busy-ness of college visits and GECCO in Portland have once again put me behind on this. Enough so that my wonderful mother commented on it. Oops. Sorry. It's day 11, and I'll try to get us up to day 6 today :-). So,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Family"","block_context":{"text":"Family","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/family\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Thomas and I and our trusty Honda Fit on our departure","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4078\/4773107479_034a8bfa05_m_d.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":298,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2006\/01\/13\/links-for-2006-01-13\/","url_meta":{"origin":229,"position":5},"title":"links for 2006-01-13","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"13 Jan 06","format":false,"excerpt":"Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction. An excellent overview of the key ideas of extreme programming\/agile development. (tags: agile code design development planning programming project projectmanagement software testing xp methodology UMM:CSci3601) XProgramming.com - an Agile Software Development Resource Ron Jeffries' site on XP. I really don't like the design, but there's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Daily links"","block_context":{"text":"Daily links","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/daily-links\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Mule, spinning","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/10\/17462199_e014cfe86b_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}