In praise of big fish in small ponds

Dear The Listserve people

I doubt you'll recognise my name.

I'm not famous. I'll never be famous.

But I have always aspired to be 'someone', a person who made some kind of small but significant contribution to 'something' . As it happened, I found such a modest niche. I'm a sociologist, working on two very specialised areas - the sociology of hevy metal and the sociology of the British Jewish community. Needless to say, there aren't many of us working in either area. I'm really just a reasonably big fish in a couple of pretty small ponds.

So for the last few years I've made a joke about being such a big fish in a small pond. I've said that really I'm just like 'the best water skier in Luxembourg'. Needless to say I didn't know anything about water skiing in Luxembourg.

But about a year ago I had a brianstorm: why not go and meet the best water skier in Luxembourg? Why not write a book about him/her and about other big fish in small ponds too? The idea seized me with excitement. This could be a polemic against power and celebrity, a celebration of the unknown heroes in obscure small worlds, a tribute to commitment and community.

So I've been working on the book. I actually met the best water skier in Luxembourg last year and I'm preparing further trips to visit such other obscure figures as the Icelandic special forces, the top novelist in Suriname and the best heavy metal band in Botswana.

The book is being crowd-funded so I need the help of strangers to complete my project. You can't post links on The Listserve but if you google 'best water skier in Luxembourg' or e-mail me, you can find out more.

In the meantime thank you to The Listerserve for making me a little bit famous for one e-mail.

Yours

Keith Kahn-Harris
London, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Favorites

This is a puzzle.

Beyond this message a challenge awaits; In the listserve, no links are allowed, what a cruel fate! The first clue must be deciphered by ROT 8. . Let me know and just email if your brain needs a spark Your first clue is just after this punctuation mark / dsoqwj vwxwfvafy lge jgtafkgf af lg cadd s egucafytajv Listserve Puzzle listservepuzzle[AT]gmail.com
Read more

21,612 is a lot

Hi, everyone. I'm a teenaged girl. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know much about the world. I'm 18, a freshman in college, and I struggle every day trying to see into the future: into what might be, where I might go. Recently I've decided that my destiny in life is to be a high-school biology teacher, but ask me again later and perhaps that will have changed. One thing I feel passionate about is body modification. Somehow my standards of beauty have developed in a way that put piercings, tattoos, implants and scarification at the forefront. However, my parents have threatened to cut off their funding for my education if I modify myself in any way. I already have piercings, and though my family will never see them due to their private locations, I would love to be able to share this important part of my life with them and express myself through modification in a more public way. Essentially, they have rejected my lifestyle, and through this, they have ...
Read more

Tiny wings

Hi all, I want to write about a subject that is very close to my heart - bees! I started bee keeping last year, and have two colonies right now. These two already managed to supply my family and my friends with more than enough honey, and keeping the bees is a tremendously satisfying activity. They smell so good, and are very tidy animals, and are just very, very interesting overall. The insects' way of dealing with the world is just so very different from how we as mammals approach it - it seems almost alien. Anyways, what is probably most impressive is the workload these little animals deal with. For one kilo of honey, they visit 4 million flowers, and fly a distance equivalent of more than 4 times around the earth. Think about that for a second. And then, if you start to think about how they "furniture" their housing themselves by the wax they sweat out, how they can control temperature inside the hive to the tenth of a degree, how they collectively make decisions i...
Read more