It’s Friday the 13th, and you know what that means — no, you’re not in a horror movie, it’s just Carberry Day! You may have received a strange email from Professor Josiah Carberry this morning, announcing the cancellation of his psychoceramics lecture. Professor Carberry also has two requests for students this year — the first, which he asks every Friday the 13th, is to leave your loose change in assorted containers left around campus for books, “which he might or might not approve of.”  In case you were wondering, we still don’t really know what that means, but trust in Carberry. Carberry’s second request was for donations to Brown’s Annual Fund in honor of Ruth. Sneakily asking for our money in two different ways? We see you, Josiah. We see you.

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Who is this brilliant man who brought us the “Spicy-With,” the “chicken carb(erry),” and consequently the 15 pounds that have clung to our formerly slight freshman frames? What brilliance created a place for Brown students to go when we seek to soak up alcohol with greasy food or alleviate our sorrow by looting Uncrustables? Who/What is Josiah Carberry?

Josiah Stinkney Carberry is a traveler. He is a professor.  He is you. He is me.  He is Brown University’s residential house elf (?).  As swiftly as a genie is released from a bottle or Mary Poppins emerges from the sky, Josiah Carberry popped on the scene at Brown University.  His existence can be marked back to 1929, when he was scheduled to give a lecture on “Archaic Greek Architectural Revetments in Connection with Ionian Philology.” People interested in the lecture were told to contact Professor John Spaeth, who when prodded for more information on the mysterious new professor, mentioned other members of Carberry’s family, including a puffin-huntingdaughter and Carberry’s assistant Truman Grayson, who had a knack for being bitten by things beginning with the letter, “A.” [Read more →]