* A Scrooge Tranformation : For God, For Country, and For Yale ?

Paul Keane

(A Yale Scrooge)

Alive and Transformed

DECEMBER 22, 2008

This photo has a date December 22, 2008, four years and one day ago. I am coming out of anesthesia after having half of my kidney removed for cancer by superb surgeons at Dartmouth/Hitchcock Hospital. It was  the first time since I was born that I had been in the hospital.  It was the first time I took a sick day in 20 years.

I asked to have my “Yorick” fool's cap when I woke up and promised to recite Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem The Jabberwocky  to prove that I had not lost my marbles during surgery.  Witnesses say I succeeded,  although my speech was sluggish.

I had also made another promise.  To myself.

If I lived (and apparently I did since it is four years later and I will turn 68 on December 28), I would  resume using my divinity degree which I had ignored like a Scrooge ignoring humanity  for the last 23 years (1985-2008). 

Thus was born The Anti-Yale in September 2009.

I had resolved  not to be silent about the world any more, especially as seen through the rose-colored  glasses of Yale.

I had graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1980 with the terminal degree and with three exceptions had not used my degree to the benefit of society at all: Racial profiling at Yale (graduation, 1980); the  60 Minutes piece entitled Helen (February, 1984) on the heterosexual transmission of AIDS discovered at Yale-New Haven Hospital, the place of my birth; and The Disappearance of Sam Todd (Connecticut  Magazine, 1985.)

In the 34 months The Anti-Yale has been posting and challenging Yale assumptions, the blog has received 172,627 page views of its 782 posts.

Perhaps it is occupying a niche, answering a need.

Retirement, June, 2012