It’s official: Vandwellers are banned from Duke

I was writing the epilogue of my book, and I needed to figure out one last thing: Have vandwellers been banned from Duke as a result of my experiment?

I annoyed Duke’s Parking and Transportation Services Office with calls and emails for months, but they refused to respond to my inquiries, so I–pressed for time–approached Duke’s office of Public Affairs.

Apparently, vandwellers have been banned. Here’s the new rule:

4.17.5 Overnight or extended parking of campers, vans, buses, etc., utilized as living and sleeping quarters within campus boundaries, is not permitted unless approved by Parking and

Transportation Services.

While I acknowledge that Duke is a big, sprawling billion-dollar corporate bureaucracy, and they have to cover their asses, I still think the rule is stupid. I could name a hundred reasons why, but I’ve already done so, so there’s no need to beat a dead horse.

Their reason? From one Duke spokesman: “As a private institution, Duke can determine the permitted and appropriate use of its facilities. Living in the parking lot is not permitted for reasons of safety, security, health and liability.”

More chicken pictures

We’ve decided on names to give to the chickens, again with the theme of 19th Century English authors. We haven’t distributed the names yet, but we’ve agreed on the following: Fanny and Fiona for the (light-colored) Golden Comets; Evangeline and Geraldine for the (dark-colored) Barred Rocks; and Helen for our newly arrived (medium-colored) Ameraucana. Seeing as how David and I consider ourselves monks, the new brood of chickens shall be considered nuns, and they each shall be addressed with the title of “Sister.”

David babysitting the chickens.

The chickens in their cage in my room.

I take them out to the garden for a half an hour each day.

Missing from the photo is the new Ameraucana, who doesn't like her picture taken.

Fanny and Fiona.

Weekly Quote: Friendship

“A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know of stopping and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind. You may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, coastoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.” – Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, from his essay “Of Friendship”

“Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of rivals endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1900-1944, Wind, Sand, and Stars

“The English word ‘free,’ for instance, is derived from a German root meaning ‘friend,’ since to be free meant to be able to make friends, to keep promises, to live within a community of equals. This is why freed slaves in Rome became citizens: to be free, by definition, mean to be anchored in a civic community, with all the rights and responsibilities that this entailed.” – David Graeber, 1961-present, Debt