*culture is not optional

Deborah has recently been conditioned by Facebook status and by bio writing to refer to herself in the third person, and isn't sure what to think about that. She thinks of such things regularly as she studies the intersections between media, narrative, and society as a doctoral student in Communication at Purdue University. She finds it helpful to remember on a regular basis that she is considerably more than a bio and considerably less than God. Studying T. S. Eliot's poem Four Quartets and Thoreau's Walden during her MA in English recently helped her with this quest. She is very aware, with Eliot, that "Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden" but, despite that, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business" (T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets). She seeks to live her life according to the Christian narrative.