Author T-Shirts and Prof Street Cred

Sep 9, 2016
2 min read

Professors wear author t-shirts to meetings. Or is that just me? Well, maybe today. I decided to wear my newest literary t-shirt to two meetings today. Sometimes when professors come to campus on their days off from teaching they wear t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes these t-shirts represent a place they have been to or an author whose work they love. Today's shirt covers both.

Take a look at my Flannery O'Connor shirt, which I snagged from the delightful gift shop shelf in the Savannah childhood home of our beloved author.

The shirt includes an emblem stylistically associated with O'Connor--the peacock. The back of the shirt I chose to purchase includes a wonderful quotation packed with that O'Connor punch: "The writer is only free when he can tell the reader to go jump in the lake."

Other shirts, in shades of green and blue, show different sayings. This one struck me as particularly amusing and fitting for the kind of statement that I would make, were I an "author." I blog, but that's not really auth-ing, right? :P

To know me is to know that I love visiting museums, and museum gift shops! This particular venue has both--upon entering you pay a small fee to hear a docent spin a wonderful yarn about the home, about its coming into Flannery O'C's parents' possession, about young Flannery's passion for writing, about the interesting furniture in the house, such as a crib with chicken wire over it. You learn, too, that this house was not the only home our author lived in, and it's not the one with peacocks, either. It is a home, though, across from a majestic Catholic church, and one of those famous Savannah squares. All of this makes the trip worth it...and the gift shop, of course. :)