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Professor of Plums for Ricardo Quintana Last week he might have been sleeping through the lecture on Samuel Johnson being given in his honor, had he not opened his eyes occasionally to laugh his walrus laugh, his whole body shaking, tossing some fruits and vegetables toward the orator on the stage. Crafty old fellow. Every Saturday morning I’d see him in the supermarket in the cottage cheese and eggs or picking through the radishes and lettuce, asking through his mustache could I explicate an apple? Deconstruct a peach? And then go wheeling cockeyed down the aisle to beat the band, whistling like a schoolboy and nobody’s grand old man. And now I get this message that his own heart has failed him, has slumped like a student too unprepared to speak. Oh Professor of Plums, sweet Tutor of Produce, may your soul walrus its way up through 18 whatever long lectures Dean Death may invent for you. May you toss him some eggs and tomatoes. May you chuckle through that long sleep. 19 ...

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