We Live Where We Are

A letter to a former professor, currently on paid leave, regarding an unusual confusion in the naming of muppets.

In reference to your latest blog entry, the one concerning "green" in its many forms, I'll assume you know our froggy green friend is "Kermit," and that by referring to him as one who lives a hermetic life of solitude you were actually making an allusion to your current sabbatical.

Granted, Hermit the Frog would make a terrific addition to the foam and felt cast of Jim Henson regulars. I envision him holed up in a box or ratty tenement on the south side of Sesame Street, an Oscar-the-Grouch minus the stench and with the astringent piety that comes from deep religious conviction. Perhaps he could take Ernie's rubber ducky obsession one step further and keep bronze icons of lily pads and horseflies barb-wired around his thin-skinned chest, close to his small, slowly beating heart. Was he driven to this solitary life of sackcloth by his cold, moist, amphibian lust for Miss Piggy, that voluptuous and porky sometime paramour of his older, more charismatic and socially-mobile brother, Kermit? If this sexual rage did not drive him to live in rags and sleep on bags of coal (and I'm sure it did), his lonely lifestyle can only be explained by what I presume to be a humble reverence for, and servile obedience to, whatever watery gods inhabit the ponds and soggy bogs of frog-dom.

Sincerely,

Casey