If at about 21,000 pageviews after 21 months of blogging, Rabbit Punched hasn't exactly gone viral, at least now it's gone into print.  Oklahoma Humanities, the journal of the Oklahoma Humanities Council, is one of five such journals in the country that are devoted to serious issues rather just promotional fluff.  The recently published fall issue centers on Medicine: The Humanities Prescription and features several pages of entries from my blog.

I went to the University of Oklahoma for all my graduate work, so there's a tie there, and Carla Walker, the editor of the journal, was my student at Washburn.  She writes an introduction to the excerpts in which she tells a story that's become a motif over the summer: she was used to easy A's until she took a class from me.  Unhappy with her grades, she came to see me to complain but left with "advice that stood me in good stead, as I would build a career on my tendency to edit."  There are six full pages of selections, many more than I had expected, and the individual entries are printed in their entirety.  There are many excerpts from early in the series, when the prognosis was particularly grim and the subject of the blog likely to be death and atheism.  There are also many entries when I discuss poems and how literature reflects on life and death. 

I got to choose the art work that accompanies the article, and I chose a Los Angeles artist, John Fox, whom I've known since 1977.  www.johnfoxart.net  The four samples of his work included are not just lovely and intriguing in themselves, but also make a wonderful complement to the writing.  John's art has evolved through many iterations in the years that I've known him, and these are particularly apt in their organic imagery.

(John's partner, Richard, may be familiar to many of you from the series of H & R Block commercials he did last tax season.  Directed by Errol Morris, the black and white ads feature Richard, a former C.F.O., in a trademark bow tie, extolling the professionalism of Block employees and the pleasure they take in what seems like mundane work.  The ads were certainly memorable; everyone to whom I mentioned them, claiming friendship with Richard, knew exactly what I was referring to.)

There are also a couple of photos with the article.  One is of Mohamed and me at a reception at Washburn.  The other is from 1970.  Carla asked whether I had any photos from when I was at OU, and I chose one from hippie and activist days--me with frizzy hair and John Lennon sunglasses during a protest by OKC garbage workers.

I am very flattered by the publication with the well-chosen samples of the blog entries, the art, the photos, and the many personal connections the selections bring to mind.  Copies of the journal are available for order at www.okhumanities.org