R.I.P. Chris Pedigo (1971-2006)

Chris was a regular visitor at the Pink House, and one of my good friends at UNC. He was hilarious, generous, kind-hearted, and a co-conspirator in many capers.

For several years Chris lived in the gorgeous, decaying mansion known as the Russian House. He spoke Russian, French, and was fluent in a couple other languages. In the spring of '92, I was his campaign manager when Chris ran for Senior Class Vice President on a ticket with Caroline Philson in the top spot. We lost, but it was a very fun campaign, and the Caroline and Chris team had the coolest posters of any candidates for student office that I saw in my entire time at Carolina.


In the summer of '92, our paths memorably crossed for several weeks in Paris, when my brother and I took a trip over there and hung out with Chapel Hill ex-pats like Pedigo, his friend Aaron Gannon, globe trotting journalist and Pink House roomie Kyle York Spencer, and future Pink House couch surfer John Hamilton Palmer.

Chris was gay, but closeted in college, even after he contracted HIV in Paris and returned to Chapel Hill. Living with HIV was hard for Chris in the early 90s. A full decade after the epidemic burst into the public eye, progress on developing life-saving drugs remained painfully slow. It was a direct result of right-wing politicians like Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) underfunding the nation's public health response, under the criminally homophobic, warped belief that AIDS victims deserved to die.


Chris enrolled in numerous experimental trials of AIDS drugs at Duke University, which kept him alive until more effective treatments came onto the market a few years later. As time went on, Chris’ medical condition left him facing increasingly perilous financial straits. But he kept his sense of humor and refused to give up. Sadly, I lost touch with Chris after he moved to Florida in the late 90s, where he lived and worked in West Palm Beach.

Death Notices - News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) 1/2/07, B6

Christopher James Pedigo
MARCH 9, 1971 - DECEMBER 29, 2006

Christopher James Pedigo, 35, passed on Friday, December 29, 2006.

He is survived by his loving mother; Elizabeth Ann Pedigo; father, James; younger brother Taylor; and friends.

Despite the many obstacles set before him due to a long battle with compounding physical ailments; armed with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge he achieved various levels of advanced education and was fluent in several foreign languages, along with being an accomplished pianist, for all of which we are very proud.

Chris, your enthusiastic conversation and bright eyed smile will be missed, yet will remain in our hearts forever.

An American Dream for the 90's

As I write this, it's the tail end of a sunny February afternoon in Chapel Hill. The mercury has been a constant 40 degrees, I've been driving around all day, and this town has been giving me a headache. Maybe it's that I can't wait for winter to end. Or maybe I'm pissed off that the most exciting thing I could think of to do today was going to a bowling alley to play some damn pinball.

Yeah, Chapel Hill in February. New York it's not.

Was that a postcard I got from you via Los Angeles? I thought I recognized your scrawl. Something about visiting Bela's grave. I still haven't seen Ed Wood, but I want to, regardless of the bad reviews it got from sources usually in the know. Best film of '94? No contest - Pulp Fiction. Best old film I've seen recently - On The Waterfront. Before that it was probably Love Story, with Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal. Of course, I've hardly seen any movies lately because I've been working crazy hours like the wage slave I am. But more about that soon. Oh, and you know what new film I'd love to go see right now? The Brady Bunch Movie. I bet that shit will be funny as hell.

So, what is up with you? Hope life in the city treated you well this past year. My only visits to NYC since last new year's have been very brief ones, for a night or a day at a time, just passing through. One memorable time last fall was when I was home for a few days and Jared and his girlfriend Heather Anne drove Tony, a friend of his, and myself down to see Deee-Lite play the Sound Factory. But overall, I've gone through Big Apple withdrawal. I spent this past New Year's in D.C. hanging with a Chapel Hill crew, and chilled most of the big evening at D.C.'s premier nightclub establishment, Tracks. Although now I hear this new club called Buzz is giving them some serious competition. Incidentally, it's now around the end of March. This note has been lying around half-written for awhile.

I've been working full time since September in a "entry-level" position in an advertising agency/market research firm called FGI, which used to stand for Four Guys, Inc. when the business was first founded. Now it's more like Fucking Getting Irritated. Let's make that a "basement-level" position, because I do work in a basement. It's actually a phone center, a.k.a. an electronic sweatshop, staffed by students, recent grads, college flunkouts, and middle-aged slackers with whom I work daily.

If my supervisors had their way, I would be on the phones eight hours a day, calling anybody, anywhere, for all types of stupid projects, mostly trying to reach the people who are the most difficult to reach over the telephone. I also do mass mailings and general clerical work, but my official job title is sort of a cross between "market research assistant" and "telemarketer." I'm kind of amazed I've lasted this long in the place, but I figured there would be some advancement opportunity upstairs into the actual ad agency portion of the business. Guess again. They did start me at $8 an hour, and it has been good to get something post-college down on my resume. It's also allowed me to get an up-close look at how a medium-to-large-size (200 employee) company functions, and also how this company treats its employees, the fucked up working conditions we're subjected to, low wages paid, etc., knowledge I can put to use in future labor organizing projects. But now I'm ready to be out.

It's bugged, too, because before I got this job I was making crazy money working for myself, and enjoying the hell out of it. This was during August and September, right around the beginning of the school year. Spurred on by my need to move all my stuff out of the Pink House, and get rid of half of it, I became a used furniture broker. Things mushroomed and I started selling absurd used furniture to kids moving into dorms and apartments, all kinds of crazy shit, and netted about four grand altogether. Not bad for six weeks' work. It was fun.

Working full time for six months has given me all the motivation I need to get me off my duff and tightly focused on my political fundraising plans, pronto. So for the last week or so, I've been trying to jump- start a job search that will hopefully extricate me from the fucked up wage slave work I'm doing now and give me more time to work on my own stuff. I've been applying for administrative assistant-type positions, mostly in Chapel Hill and Durham, to work 25-30 hours a week. I don't really want to have to drive to Raleigh, which is about 40 minutes away when traffic is light. And during the workweek, traffic is anything but light around here. That's one of the biggest drawbacks to living somewhere where the state government has been too shortsighted over the years to invest in public infrastructure. I'm not even talking about the lack of a any type of light rail system in all of North Carolina, I'm screaming about there not even being regularly scheduled fucking public buses that will take you between Chapel Hill and Raleigh. Do you want to know how many times the public buses run between here and Durham, which is 20 minutes away by car? Twice a day - once in the morning, again at night. No weekend service. Period.

So I'm trying to find some work that's less physically and mentally debilitating than what I'm doing, will let me work less hours, and pay more. Sort of like an American Dream for the 90's. I'm also trying to coordinate all kinds of schemes and projects with various individuals who are also tired of sitting around on their slacker butts and are starting to want to get paid. Speaking of dough, my personal business ventures may be bringing me through the Big Apple real soon. Like, it's now Sunday night, March 26, and I'm thinking of taking a road trip north this coming Friday, the 31st. I would be stopping in D.C. to drop something off and (maybe) pick something up from Erica Salmon. I haven't seen her in a long time, since probably back around Clinton's inauguration, more than two years ago! That's so wack. But the minute I tell Tony Fishel that I'm driving through D.C., he's on me. "Dude, you have to get my shirt from her! This red, long-sleeved shirt of mine that she has. I've been totally missing it!" So I may have to see her on the drive-by.

Yeah, so our initial destination for Friday night is Boston. Tony is now living with my brother, and they have a phat crib over in a section of town called Jamaica Plain. Three other roommates and them share the place, two floors, very big, very nice layout. And Tony claims to be throwing a rave on Friday night at the crib itself, "a small rave, only 50 people." Oh, did I mention that their house is on a residential street packed tight with baby strollers and old people? Maybe this is Tony's idea of a neighborhood outreach program. But regardless, I will be on hand to give witness.

And then, my tentative driving companion has expressed interest in stopping in New York on our way back, i.e. next Saturday night, April 1st. So if this all pans out, and I do end up in town, I'll give you a call. Hope you haven't moved or anything, since I'm sending this letter to your most recent address. And it would be cool to see you.

- Letter to Robb Teer, 3/27/95

Rise Up! with Lady Miss Kier at the Sound Factory

The New England Tour '93

It was late December, right before Christmas, and we all needed to get north. Our friend Mel Benner was headed home to Philadelphia. I was going up to Rhode Island. For whatever reason, Derek Elliott was bypassing his parents' place in New Jersey on the drive up, instead heading for Boston to hang with Lem who was visiting his aunt in Jamaica Plain.

Lem's cousin, Derek, Lem & his aunt at her house in Boston

Mel's mom very graciously greeted us with open arms when we showed up around 8 am in the morning. Then she cooked us breakfast, I think it was pancakes. Clearly, we had gotten a late start, and drove through the night from Chapel Hill.

This was actually the second time in a space of a few months that Derek and I had breakfast at someone named Mel's house in Pennsylvania – the first being our Fall Break '93 trip to NYC when we crashed at Pink Housemate Mel Lanham's place (just south of Valley Forge) along the way. But dropping Mel Benner off meant a trip to the heart of downtown Philadelphia. Before we got back on the road, Derek, Lem and I made some new friends on the mean streets and with our tour guides along for the ride, took a driving tour of South Philly that shocked all of us. The blocks we drove through looked like war zones. It was the most rundown urban landscape in America I've seen before or since.

After Xmas, in the aftermath of a blizzard-strength Northeast snowstorm, all of us (minus Mel) would connect in Boston with Tony Fishel, who was at that point living in an apartment on Mass Ave.


It was right before Tony moved to a huge three-story house in Jamaica Plain with my brother Jared and several other roommates, including his then-girlfriend Shelly and possibly Pete Moss, who would later relocate to Baltimore and become a fairly well-known DJ on the rave circuit. Jared and Tony lived in two attic rooms on opposite ends of the third floor, and it was a swank pad. Their house was within blocks of Lem's aunt's place.

Then the three of us drove down to NYC to spend New Year's Eve with Dana in the city. To be exact, we were crashing at his place, although on our own for entertainment, because he was probably spending the night with Erika. I think that's how everything went down.


Details are hazy, but among other places we stopped by a party at Rashmi's apartment in midtown Manhattan after running for like, twenty blocks through the cold streets to try and make it there by the time the ball dropped. We could hear the Times Square crowd in the distance.


And then likely ended up over at Sapphire, our favorite little out-of-the-way NYC club, which was around the corner from a spot where my RI buddy Robb Teer was working as a bouncer for a hot minute.

Altogether, we hit three major cities, which was about par for the course on a Pink House road trip.


"This is dedicated to all those who will contribute to the New England Tour '93, whether in the city or on the road..." – Lem, 12/21/93, 2:32 am

Heaven and Hell at the Purple House

Last weekend was Halloween. The night before, my housemates and I went to a party at the Purple House, which is where Tony was supposed to DJ that time y'all were going to come down. The party had a swinging theme - Heaven or Hell. See, the Purple House is a very big house. Every room was open to the crazed, costumed hordes who came swarming through. The rooms were all decorated in different ways, colored lights everywhere, black lights, strobes, debris on the stairs, floors, all over. And everyone, it seemed, was wearing these really elaborate costumes. One guy was William Shakespeare. Then there were some zombie tourists. Another miscreant had an Ernest mask that covered his face, and made him look like a ghoul. He was up in people's faces all night long, fucking with them.


One of the guys who lives in the Purple House is a friend of mine named Ian Williams, who worked on a book project with my housemate N'Gai this summer. Ian also was a contributor to this book 13th Gen, which you may remember me showing you at some point, a book all about kids in our generation. Anyway, Ian was dressed as a blue angel. He was the party host in charge of Heaven, this room where he was mixing up clear blue drinks all night long. Also in this room was something thoroughly bugged, which you have to try and find up north.

It was this christmas tree light device called "Magic Christmas" - a specially designed string of christmas lights. They were arranged in a spiral, all strung up on the ceiling. Using this little hand-held device that you squeeze in and out, sort of like a little joke water-squirting device, you can control the speed and frequency of the patterns that these "Magic Christmas" lights flash in. It was too much. Oh, and at the very center of the house was this little scroungy bathroom, lit up with the only red light in the place. So you could say this bathroom was the epicenter of hell as it existed that night at the Purple House.

- Letter to Jared, 11/7/93

Lichtenstein at the Guggenheim, Miro at MOMA

During our NYC trip, we went to all these museums, chilled in the Village nearly every day, went out to clubs, hung out with Dana and N'Gai, checked out Harlem, went to a church service for New York's jazz community, saw famous people, got to see a completely phat jazz performance, and were almost constantly driving all over the city, owing to the fact that our crew was staying in three different places around Manhattan.

We saw retrospectives of Paul Klee and Roy Lichtenstein at the Guggenheim galleries, and a Joan Miro exhibit at MOMA, which was incredible. We went to the Museum of Broadcasting, which is on West 52nd street, between 5th and 6th avenues, I think, right around the corner from MOMA, and is totally the shit. They have a computerized card catalog system with all these TV and radio programs from the past, donated by the networks.

Anyone can go in, reserve space on one of the ninety-six VCR consoles they have, and select programs to watch. I saw the premiere episode of this animated show "Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home" that you and I used to watch when we were little and that I've been wanting to see again for years.



It was produced by Hanna Barbera, Tom Bosley from Happy Days did the father's voice, and it was like an animated All in the Family, very socially relevant, a hippie son, sexually liberated daughter, and a crazy right-wing next-door neighbor who belonged to the John Birch Society.

- Letter to Jared, 11/7/93

Instinctive travels up and down the East Coast

This is your main man Erik the revolutionary guru, coolin' in Chapel Hill at the Pink House. What's up! I got your eminently digable letter that youse sent me from Jerusalem. It sounded like you were up to positive tricks as usual, causing trouble, skeezing on bodacious cuties, fighting the IMO powers that be in occupied Palestine.

It's now Friday. You know what I'm going to do tonight? I think Derek Shadid just got back in town from his internship in New York. Maybe I'll give him a call. You wouldn't believe what a treehouse the Pink House has been this summer. Numerous random passengers are along for the ride at all times. People breeze in, slide out. This shit happens constantly.

I myself only got back to town about a week ago. In fact, I read your letter my first night back, up real late with Lem. It was a trip. We were listening to some very psychedelic Hendrix at the time, a song called "1983...A Merman I Should Hope To Be," from Electric Ladyland. At one point the song talks about giving a shout to all the friends who aren't around, and I had dragged out a picture of you, just to enhance the letter reading experience, so it was cool. Remind me to show and give you copies of the pictures I took at the Inauguration when you get back in the fall. They turned out very satisfactory.

Before returning to Chapel Hill, I had spent nearly the entire month of June traveling instinctively, all up and down the East Coast. My journey began when out of the blue, I heard from a friend of mine named John Hamilton Palmer. This is a cat I met in Paris last summer. He was working for Vogue magazine at the time on an editorial assistant's internship, hanging out with supermodels and DJ's at cool clubs all over the city. He traveled with my brother Jared on to Amsterdam and then to Milan, Italy, where his Dad lives and works in the fashion industry.

Anyway, this friend of mine John returned to the States at the end of last summer, and has been living with the rest of his family in Savannah, Georgia, ever since. So then he calls me up, and tells me that he's headed to New York, where he's going to be working for Conde Nast again, the publishing company that owns Vogue. He says he's leaving in a few weeks, so on the spur of the moment, I decide to take a little road trip down to visit him.

I convince Chris Pedigo to come with me. At this point, Chris was getting ready to leave for Middlebury, Vermont in a little while, where he's taking summer Russian classes.

We roll out of Chapel Hill on a Wednesday afternoon, and make it to our first destination, Myrtle Beach, S.C., before 10 pm that night. See, the Digable Planets were playing there.

(We met) this woman (who) knew Myrtle Beach really well and after chilling with me and Chris for awhile decided she'd take us out and show us around town, meaning all the remaining after hours bars and clubs. Cool! Her name was Jean, and we went with her all over town. Everywhere we went, the scene was the same. Young, horny kids, lots of women wearing sexy summer beach clothes, everybody essentially looking to get laid.

The next day, we get on the road by late afternoon and drive southward, towards Savannah, Georgia.

That night, we hang out with my friend John. Chris also knew him from last summer in Paris, so it was like a mini-reunion. Anyway, he took us out clubbing. We got into two clubs for a couple of dollars, free drinks because he knew the bartenders, and split our time between both all night since they were totally within walking distance. A fun night.

The next day was Friday. We got up, chilled, and got on the road, bound for Atlanta. Blew into town late afternoon, and headed directly for Little Five Points, which is sort of the Greenwich Village of Atlanta. Very funky. Here we collected club flyers, local magazines, and other information about the nightlife that evening.

Then, we sped all around the city, scouting out all the nightclubs where we had free passes to get in for the night. Some people in Little Five Points stopped us on the street and thought my friend John was so beautiful (he used to be a male model) that they put us all onto the guest list at one joint. We hit four clubs that night and had many adventures.

...

Damn, man, I'm not even half done telling you about my instinctive travels of the last month. Maybe in a future letter I'll pick up the narrative. Just to give you a taste of stories to come, from Atlanta, we took John back home to Chapel Hill with us, chilled for a week, then I drove him back down to Savannah. During that week at home we threw a mad party at the Pink House, attendance levels approaching six hundred or so. Then I headed north, stopping in D.C. to hang with my friend Dana for half a week before continuing on to Rhode Island. There, I saw friends and family, and spent a particularly adventure-filled long weekend in Boston before coming back to Chapel Hill. Swung through D.C. again on the way down to chill further with Dana. I had planned to head further south to Miami for that weekend (this was this past weekend), and hang with this woman Rashmi Airan, but at the last minute decided that the journey had to end.

So here I am, back in Chapel Hill.

I think that in early August, Jenny and I are going to travel up north to Rhode Island for one or two weeks. Lydia and Jay may come with us, and we'll chill with Kyle at some point, who's working at a community newspaper in a small town on the Connecticut-Rhode Island border. When I was going through D.C., I found out that Erica Salmon (the one we stayed with) is living on campus at GWU this summer, trying to do some painting. I'm glad you had time to write, and please write back. I'd love to know what's up with my boy Firas and his many adventures in Jerusalem and the surrounding environs, dealing with Israeli security forces, hooking up with chicks from Duke. N'Gai just received your letter, too. He says hello. You know what? We were just watching Yo! MTV Raps and a video came on by Pete Nice and Daddy Rich. Pete Nice used to be with 3rd Bass, and everybody in the room was like, yo, check this motherfucker out! He looks totally like Firas!

- Letter to Firas, 7/3/93

The Jum, or, A Tud Story

Erik: "You see, Jared, I think we've been having a tud."

Jared: "What?"


Erik: "A tud. You know, a tud."

Firas: "A tud...what's that?"

Erik: "You know, a totally unproductive day. And we've definitely been having one."

Firas: "If motherfuckers like us keep having tuds, somebody like the jum is going to rule the world."


Jared: "The jum...don't house the jum. These are my boys."

Erik: "What's up with this jum?"

Firas: "The jum is in the house."

Jared: "Somebody pass me a pen. Firas, you see that pen over there?"

Firas: "Of the jazz, of the jum, of the rhythm of the funk."

Jay (walking in, on the phone): "Does someone have the remote? What? No, the phone. Hey."

Firas: "Wake my ass up for court tomorrow.


Erik: "Yo man, what's up."

Jay: "Yeah. Uh huh. What's that? O.k. I don't care. You know, if you want to come over here, you can come over any time you want. So just come by whenever you feel like it."

Firas: "Yo, Jay, what's this party you're checking out?

Jay: "In Carrboro. On North Greensboro Street."


Erik: "Jay, tell us about the seventh grade aspect of it!"

Jay: "Spin the Bottle, Seven Minutes In Heaven, Suck and Blow."


Jared: "What does all this mean? What does it all mean, Firas?

Firas: "I don't know, dude."

Rave of the future at Purple House

Ian, Clay, Matt, and the rest of the Purple House residents were willing to let me promote one of their house parties, especially since I promised to import out-of-state talent (our crash pad pal from Boston, DJ Stony). I'm not sure what color purple crossed with pink makes, but that was this night's flavor. We were all comrades in arms when it came to livening up the off-campus party scene. Also when it came to catching scabies, but that's another story.


There were three versions of this poster, each featuring a different Rhode Island crew member who was going to make the trip. But despite my grand plans, none of the special guests hyped on the posters materialized, supposedly due to a broken-down car. I don't remember what Dana's excuse was, he was visiting from NYC and crashing at the Pink House two nights before:

"So that's how these kids are at the law school. They get on my nerves. Their philosophy is, 'I just want a job, I don't care who I sell out, I just want to work in the firm, I just want some money for my kids.' " - Dana, rap session with N'Gai and Erik, 3/17/93

but apparently his plans changed and he couldn't stay through the weekend. Regardless, the party went on as scheduled, a good time was had by all, and Dai's spirit certainly hung in the air, two weeks after his epic first visit to Chapel Hill.

Lost in Brooklyn on our way to Revelation

The first year that Dana took the Big Apple by storm as a Columbia law student, he lived at the International House on Riverside Drive, in the heart of Morningside Heights. Hanging out with him over Xmas break is when N'Gai and myself first met Dai, who had become friends with Dana that fall. Dai was in New York to learn English, and also to learn more about music. So when we heard there was a big post-Christmas rave happening, we decided we had to go check it out.

Dai actually found another rave to go to that he was convinced would be even better than the one we were looking for, but he took the train downtown with us before we all split up. N'Gai, Dana and I headed for an underground record store in the Village where a bus was supposedly coming to give kids rides to the clandestine Brooklyn location where Revelation was about to go down - "a new gathering dedicated to exploration rather than exploitation."

There were at least a hundred kids waiting outside the store, also looking for the rave bus. Needless to say, that fucking bus never showed up. And then N'Gai bailed on us! But I asked some kids who had room in their car for a ride, and they were like, sure, hop in! So Dana and I set off looking for Revelation.

We spent the next two hours driving around Brooklyn and probably parts of the Bronx with these kids, very lost. But somehow, we finally made it to the rave.

"That night was really fun. It was my first introduction to that song Follow Me, you remember that one?" - Dana, 2014

I remember the music being off the chain, and one look at the flyer proves why. Frankie Bones, Keoki, Scott Henry, Micro, Scott Hardkiss, Debo, and Josh Wink were the biggest names among an all-star lineup of a dozen underground DJ's. We unexpectedly ran into my brother Jared there, who looked like John Travolta in a full-on 70s leisure suit. It was a legendary event, held exactly two weeks after Frankie Bones threw his final Storm Rave on December 12, and very representative of the underground NYC rave scene of the time.

A famous landmark, and very pink

How's life with you at the University of Iowa? Is Iowa City treating you well? My old roommate Clint, who's from Iowa, no longer lives with me and my other housemates in our Pink House. (I did tell you about the house I stay in here in Chapel Hill, and how it's a famous landmark, and very pink, right...?) But he's still in town. I was trying to call him tonight so he could tell me about some cool places in Iowa City to let you know about, but he's not around. On the other hand, Iowa City is so small that you've probably found them all by now anyway. Clint's Dad is a professor at your school...his name is Tom Curtis, but I can't remember what department he teaches in.

Yeah, anyway, so you ran into Kyle in Prague, huh? She ended up working at the Prague Post not only throughout the summer, but also all this past semester. In fact, she's still there now, but definitely plans on returning to New York by Christmas time. Then she's coming back to Chapel Hill next semester to live with us. I really wish that I could have made it to Prague while we were over there, but there's always next time.

She wasn't the only one who ended up staying in Europe longer than planned, either. I guess she told you that Jared didn't come home with me when I left Paris! He essentially decided that because we'd spent three whole weeks there, he had been thoroughly gypped. So he figured he'd hang around and see more of Europe. I left on schedule, and one of his friends decided to fly there and travel around with him for awhile. They went to Amsterdam, then to Milan, and finally to London. I think it was just after you left that we met this really cool guy named John Hamilton Palmer, who worked for Vogue magazine. He took us out with him to all these clubs, including two amazing ones, Club D'Etoile and Le Bains (Douche). Anyway, John was also traveling with Jared and his friend for a while.

Jared finally returned home about a month after I did, to our parents' immense relief.

Get this...you remember our other friend Chris Pedigo? The one we went out to dinner with at Troy's restaurant on the last day you were in Paris? Well, his whole rationale for being in France was that he had won a scholarship to travel to the former Soviet Union all summer long. He originally planned to stop in Paris only on his way there, staying only for a couple of weeks. He ended up drinking all of his scholarship money and staying in Paris for six months, living outside of the city in a chateau. The closest he got to the former Soviet Union was being introduced by his wealthy hosts to the aristocracy of the exiled Russian community - poets, princes and princesses - going to balls with them and getting smashed, drinking coffee in cafes, that sort of thing.

Pedigo fell enormously into debt on his American Express account when he loaned these supposedly wealthy hosts of his an amazing $20,000...! This is money that as of today, they still aren't supposed to be sending him here in the U.S. "until next week." Pretty wild, crazy stuff. I feel like I'm the only one who missed out, though. Everybody else got to have fun in Paris and the rest of Europe for much longer than I did...you included!

If you have any desire to take a roadtrip next semester and come South, feel free to come and stay with me in Chapel Hill. It's a lot like both Iowa City and Champaign-Urbana, only better.

- Letter to Susan Campbell