If G-d's not a tar heel, why is the sky Carolina blue?

Finally, more than halfway through my stay here, I am feeling more at home here in Chapel Hill and starting to write again. Maybe it was a bout of existential anxiety/depression, maybe it was just typical Type-A adjustment time. Whatever it was, i'm glad it is ebbing away. Yesterday was a perfect, "I love Chapel Hill" day. Beautiful clear blue sky, not too hot, etc. I went on campus for a little bit, drove around...as beautiful as Columbia is, UNC's campus....no comparison. But of course, they're very different. Perfect example of why I love it here: I was at Caribou Coffee, and I asked the lady sitting next to me if she could watch my stuff for 5 minutes, as I was just running to the restroom. The place was fairly busy, with students doing work, and she said yes. I went up to the women's restroom door, knocked, and tried to open it. The door wouldn't budge. So I went back, and when I sat down, another girl turned to me and said, "That door tends to stick a lot, it's really hard to open, you might want to try it again." And just as she said that, a guy stood up and pushed the door open and looked over at me. I got up and laughed, and was like, does everyone know about the sticking door? He laughed and said, "Only the regulars."
Or how I was at McIntyre's, and we were all making fun of "50 Shades of Grey," and a customer joined our conversation and mentioned how interesting it was, the differing viewpoints and opinions between the 2nd wave and 3rd wave feminists. Which started a whole new conversation.

I was driving down Franklin St yesterday, remembering the first time I drove down that street, five years ago. Hard to believe that I had no idea how this place would get into my blood.

In other thoughts, there's that whole "book snob" and Steven King thing that went on. If you haven't read it, here's the LA Review of Books piece. This is a salon.com piece, supporting King. Now, full disclosure: I've never read a fiction book by King. The only thing I've read of his is his nonfiction book, "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft." Which I thought was very good. This debate is exactly what I mean when I say literary versus commercial. This is what I mean when I say Columbia is literary. And while I agree with some points in the LARB piece, like how much of what is published is just really poor writing, I found the article to be really pretentious and obnoxious. I mean, we all have our tastes. This guy loves David Foster Wallace, whom I find to be incredibly pompous. I just didn't see the point in lambasting King and touting his booksnobbery. Who the fuck cares? Read what you want to read. You can't read Great Books all the time. Sometimes you need something light. Sure, we all buy The New Yorker and carry it around, and maybe - maybe - some of us even read it. I know the only time I really read and enjoy it is when Jerome Groopman or Atul Gawande writes something. But I also just as easily love Vogue and US Weekly and Garden & Gun.
Which made me wonder.....as MFA students, are we inherently book snobs? Are we being taught to be so? How does the definition of "literary" evolve, and what writers today are in the midst of changing it?  Why does my program not offer any courses on YA writing or genre writing? (also, side note, why is there a lack of Southern literature/Southern writers? I mean, Hurston, Welty, O'Connor, Faulkner....but that's a whole other blog post). Lots to think about.

Reading: On the Road (The Original Scroll) by Jack Kerouac; The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown
Listening: The Decemberists, Eisley, Guster, Chris Pureka, Neko Case