I've been Bruced. Bossified. Springsteenized.

Bruce Springsteen has provided the soundtrack of my adult life, thanks to the Guy That Got Away, a sweet New Jersey boy I dated back in my Calvin College days. It was 1980--five years after Born to Run, the iconic, amazing single and album that vaulted Springsteen into rock history and put him on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week. But in 1975 I was only 15.  "Born to Run" actually didn't make it at first onto regular radio; Springsteen didn't leap the boundaries between "rock-that-critics-adore" and "rock- that-young- unaware- Midwestern-teens-listen-to" until 1980, with The River. 1980--still four years before Born in the USA. So, until The Guy That Got Away, I didn't know Springsteen, hadn't a clue. But The Guy, well, he was from New Jersey, and he was clued-in. He volunteered as a dj on our college radio station--broadcasting to the dorms and dining halls of Calvin College, not a huge gig, mind you, but still--and I would sit there through his sessions with him. The radio station protocols were strict: every hour had to include a certain number of minutes of "Christian rock." The Guy, bless him, hated Christian rock, so he would carefully search out Christian rock songs whose duration matched those of Springsteen singles. He'd play the Springsteen, and then enter the Christian song in the log. I have to tell you, in the context of Calvin College, this was downright subversive. Of course, no one ever noticed, since no one ever actually listened to the college station. But in the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter. The Guy gave me Bruce. And I've had him ever since. Bruce, that is. Not The Guy. Which also, in the grand scheme, turned out not to matter. My mom used to say there was a lid for every pot. Actually, I think there are several. Plus pots change shape over time, and so do lids. And sometimes, you know, you just cram that sucker on there and command it to fit.

Back to our main story.

In all these years, I've never seen Springsteen in concert. There was this and there was that, never in the right place with enough money and enough time. But last night, he was in New Orleans and I was there, in the right place, at the right time, with a paid-up ticket.

It was good. It was very very good. Sometimes life is very simple and very sweet. Not often. But sometimes.

And I believe in a promised land. . .

I am not an Anglophile

Watching "Antiques Roadshow," waiting for "Doc Martin."

A friend in England once introduced me to her neighbor as a "complete Anglophile." I was stunned, and rather horrified.. An Anglophile? Me? No way. Anglophiles are like antiquarians. . . you know, crazy people, those folks who bore everybody at parties.

I am not a boring party person. I"m a British historian.

Oh dear. Not a very convincing argument.

Strange, isn't it, how one ends up doing what one does? I ended up in British history because I had to pick a senior honors thesis advisor, and  I was having a really rough time, and the British historian at Calvin was a kind, gentle man who looked like he carried peppermints in his pockets. So, I chose him instead of the famous French history guy or the cool U.S. social history guy or the serious ancient history guy. It had nothing to do with the subject; it was all about the guy. At that point in my life I desperately needed a grandpa, and Henry Ippel was it. I wrote my honors thesis, and that became what I submitted with grad school applications, so of course I ended up in British history. Happenstance, really. Just a lonely fatherless girl looking for someone to care about her. And here was this aging British history professor, such a decent man, who was willing to play the part. In such arbitrary ways, one's life gets decided.

And so, arbitrarily, as a result of a kindly college professor who never actually offered me a peppermint, I've spent much of my life studying, reading about, thinking about, living in the British Isles. I know more about British politics, social life, intellectual developments, popular and high culture, than I do the Southern American counterparts, even tho' I live in southern Louisiana. Ostensibly. But can one really live in a place when one spends most of one's time thinking about somewhere else?

After more than 20 years, I still find the South an alien place. I can't figure it out; I'm constantly stumbling, careening into no-go areas and horrified by what I uncover. Would I have embrace my area of study with such passion if I'd been able to live my life in, say, Chicago? Dunno. Life didn't happen that way. All I know is that when Keith is out of town, I switch on the Baton Rouge public radio station in the evenings: At 9 pm, the BBC World Service comes on and stays on all night long. I go to sleep, and I wake up through the night and finally in the morning, to these beautiful, comforting British accents. Strangely, the sound of home.