Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer

[Popular Mechanics, June 1938. Click for a larger version.]

There's so much to like in this illustration: the family all dressed up, the crowded back seat, the slightly fiendish boy with his head out the window, his more timid sister peeping out over the door, the barn and the nest-building bird in the background. Most of all, I like the "poem," the way it moves from joyous proclamation ("THE WORLD IS BORN ANEW" echoes the all-caps in William Carlos Williams' 1923 Spring and All: "THE WORLD IS NEW") to the gritty details of grandma's ailments, to the gentle euphemism of "'NIGHTS BEFORE,'" and then to the point: buy and use our product. I also like the mini-poem in the last panel, equating, for the second time, Alka-Seltzer and wisdom.

When I was a kid, I thought Alka-Seltzer the most sophisticated over-the-counter drug: the long glass tube, the fizz, the lack of sweetness. It made me wonder what mixed drinks might taste like. Little did I know that Alka-Seltzer was understood to be, as this ad makes clear, a hangover remedy. Sales have been flat (sorry) in recent years -- partly from concern about aspirin, partly from consumer reluctance to use products designed to treat multiple symptoms. (When was the last time you had a headache and an upset stomach at the same time? And, while I'm asking rhetorical questions: Can you imagine ordering an Alka-Seltzer at a soda fountain? Or listening to a barn dance?)

There's a story that goes with this copy of Popular Mechanics, which I bought at a flea market some years ago. While I was standing in a store waiting for my wife, a woman noticed my magazine and struck up a conversation. She had worked for PM in Chicago for many years and, it turned out, had known Clifford Hicks, the magazine's editor-in-chief and the author of my favorite book from boyhood, Alvin's Secret Code. I asked her if she knew anything about Mr. Hicks' then-current whereabouts, and she replied, "Oh, they're all dead." That prompted me to check online, and I was happy to discover that Clifford Hicks was (and is) living in North Carolina. I wrote him a fan letter some years ago and was thrilled to receive a response. But that's another story.

[Addendum: My reference to WCW was facetious. But I didn't realize that the ad is almost certainly referencing James Russell Lowell: "Each day the world is born anew / For him who takes it rightly."]

Alka-Seltzer (Wikipedia)
The Wacky World of Alvin Fernald (Clifford Hicks' fiction)

Related posts
"MONEY MAKING FORMULAS" (A PM ad)
A mystery EXchange name (Another PM ad)
Out of the past (On reading Clifford Hicks in adulthood)
"Radios, it is" (And another PM ad)

Brian Wilson at the movies

From an interview with the Asbury Park Press:

Q. Have you seen any good movies lately?

A. Well, I've only seen one in the last couple of years. It's called Norbit by Eddie Murphy.

Q. How did you like it?

A. Fantastic movie. Very funny.

Q. What's your favorite movie?

A. Norbit.

Don't Worry Baby (Asbury Park Press via SmileySmile.net)

Of guitars and zippers

From "Struts and Frets," by Burkhard Bilger, on luthier Ken Parker and guitar design:

One afternoon this winter, I watched a man named Tom Murphy systematically beat up a brand-new Les Paul. Murphy, who is fifty-six, works for GIbson's custom, art, and historic division. He has thick forearms and ruddy features and a boyish devotion to the guitar heroes of his youth. Every week or two, the company sends ten or twenty guitars to Murphy's workshop, in Marion, Illinois, and he sends them back looking as if they'd been played for fifty years. When I visited, he began by etching some lines into the lacquer with a razor blade, to mimic the crackle of an old finish. He shaved the edges off the fingerboard, so that they looked worn by countless earsplitting solos. Then he took a bunch of keys and shook them over the surface, like a spider skittering over glass. To imitate years of belt wear, he held an old buckle against the back and whacked it a few times with a hammer. Then he flipped the guitar upside down and slowly ground the headstock into the concrete floor.

A "Murphyized" Gibson sells for twice the cost of a regular Les Paul, and Murphy's signed Jimmy Pge replicas (complete with cigarette burns) have gone for as much as eighty thousand dollars. Fender's aged guitars have been equally successful. Customers can choose from various degrees of wear, from Closet Classic ("played maybe a few times per year and then carefully put away") to Heavy Relic ("played vigorously on a nightly basis") to the Rory Gallagher Tribute Stratocaster ("worn to the wood"). When I asked Matt Umanov, whose guitar store has been a fixture in Greenwich Village for forty years, why people buy these instruments, he made an impatient noise. "Ninety per cent of this business is male-oriented," he said. "In my opinion, most purchases are governed by four words: the zipper is down."

"Struts and Frets" (good title!) is available in the May 14 issue of the New Yorker (print only).

Remedial civility

William Pannapacker, who writes a column for the Chronicle of Higher Education under the pen name Thomas H. Benton, teaches English at Hope College, a small, private liberal-arts college in Michigan. His most recent column, "Remedial Civility Training," should be required reading for everyone in academic life. Here's an excerpt:

This is not about the simple rules governing which fork one should use but about norms of behavior about which nearly everyone used to agree and which seem to have vanished from student culture.

There are the students who refuse to address us appropriately; who make border-line insulting remarks in class when called upon (enough to irritate but not enough to require immediate action); who arrive late and slam the door behind them; who yawn continually and never cover their mouths; who neglect to bring books, paper, or even something with which to write; who send demanding e-mail messages without a respectful salutation; who make appointments and never show up (after you just drove 20 miles and put your kids in daycare to make the meeting).

I don't understand students who are so self-absorbed that they don't think their professors' opinion of them (and, hence, their grades) will be affected by those kinds of behaviors, or by remarks like, "I'm only taking this class because I am required to." One would think that the dimmest of them would at least be bright enough to pretend to be a good student.

But my larger concern here is not just that students behave disrespectfully toward their professors. It is that they are increasingly disrespectful to one another, to the point that a serious student has more trouble coping with the behavior of his or her fellow students than learning the material.

In classrooms where the professor is not secure in his or her authority, all around the serious students are others treating the place like a cafeteria: eating and crinkling wrappers (and even belching audibly, convinced that is funny). Some students put their feet up on the chairs and desks, as if they were lounging in a dorm room, even as muddy slush dislodges from their boots. Others come to class dressed in a slovenly or indiscreet manner. They wear hats to conceal that they have not washed that day. In larger lectures, you might see students playing video games or checking e-mail on their laptop computers, or sending messages on cell phones.

Professor Pannapacker's column jibes with recent conversations I've had with students who've told me how difficult it's become to be a good student and how fed up they are with their classmates' surly attitudes.¹ Reading this column makes me glad that I added a "decorum" paragraph to my course syllabi some years ago. It's grown more detailed over time:

The atmosphere in our class should be serious -- not somber or pretentious,‭ ‬but genuinely intellectual.‭ ‬No eating,‭ ‬talking,‭ ‬sleeping,‭ ‬wearing headphones,‭ ‬doing work for other classes,‭ ‬or other private business.‭ ‬Cell phones‭ ‬should be turned off and‭ ‬kept‭ ‬out of sight in our classroom.

That paragraph seems to cover everything -- for now.

¹ These accounts are about classmates in other classes, not in classes that I've taught.

"Teaching Remedial Civility" is available to readers without a Chronicle subscription:

Teaching Remedial Civility (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Alas, the Chronicle has placed this immensely useful essay behind its firewall. [September 10, 2009.] The essay is out from behind the firewall: Remedial Civility Training. Thanks, Chronicle.

It’s back behind the firewall again.

Related post
Homeric blindness in "colledge"

Movie recommendation: Être et avoir

Être et avoir [To Be and To Have] (2002)
directed by Nicolas Philibert
French with English subtitles
104 minutes


[Jojo and M. Lopez]

Fictional films about education, at least the ones I know, tend toward corny predictability: a young, idealistic teacher; alienated, potentially lethal students (who for some reason have not yet dropped out); a moment of breakthrough (the Jack and the Beanstalk cartoon in The Blackboard Jungle, the Silas Marner trial in Up the Down Staircase); and the teacher's resolution to forsake easier and better-paying options and continue where he or she is needed.

Nicolas Philibert's documentary, focusing on a classroom in a French village, is a welcome contrast. The teacher, Georges Lopez, is near the end of his career (after thirty-five years teaching, twenty at this school). The thirteen children in this classroom (what an American would call a "one-room schoolhouse"), ranging in age from four to twelve, are endearing. And there is no breakthrough, only small moments of humor, sorrow, and effort. Which is to say: the film moves in the way that school moves, slowly. It's appropriate that one of the first scenes we see is of two turtles making their way around the floor of the empty classroom. The film's slow pace is a reminder that the work of learning is a matter of many small steps -- writing the numeral 7, understanding the difference between ami and amie, mastering the conjugations of être and avoir.

What's most striking when I watch this film is how calm this classroom is. M. Lopez never raises his voice, and he speaks to his students without false, cartoonish praise for their efforts. The students are, of course, children, and there are cheeky attitudes and small fights. But M. Lopez seems to trust that appealing to his students' dignity and capacity for reason will sooner or later lead them to do the right thing. Thus he waits patiently for Jojo (a feisty boy who gets a lot of time on camera) to add a necessary Monsieur to his oui and reminds him of a promise to finish a picture before lunch. With Julien and Olivier, two boys with a history of fighting, M. Lopez points out the pointlessness of their battles and reminds them that they will need to stick together when they go off to middle school. What we come to see in the course of the film is a group of students whose regard for one another and for their teacher is genuine. And in M. Lopez we see a teacher with the deepest love for his students. Pay close attention when the students say goodbye.

I can remember in third grade the excitement of opening a note written by my teacher and learning that her name was Roslyn (she sent me on these messaging jaunts to her colleagues until my parents asked her to cut it out). I can remember the far greater excitement of being invited to my fourth-grade teacher's wedding. Which is to say: teachers used to be mysterious figures. I never had any idea where my teachers lived or what their families were like. So it seems appropriate to me that this film lets M. Lopez remain something of a cipher. All we learn of him, in one short scene of speaking to the camera, is that he comes from a farming family, that he wanted to be a teacher from childhood, that his mother lives in France, and that his father (no longer living) came to France from Spain. When the movie was made, M. Lopez was evidently living in the large school building. Is he married? He wears no ring. Does he have children? We don't know. I wonder for some reason whether he might be a former priest or monk. It's curious that though M. Lopez is described again and again as having become a "celebrity" in the aftermath of this film's release, I can find no further background online.

Être at avoir has, alas, a bitter and bewildering coda: when the film became a surprise hit, Georges Lopez sued for a share of the profits (and lost).

Être at avoir (The film site)
Defeat for teacher who sued over film profits (The Guardian)

The National Dean's List again

[For a previous post that explains what prompted me to look into the National Dean's List, click here.]

I just followed a link at College Confidential to Form 10-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the American Achievement Group Holding Corp., AAC Group Holding Corp., and American Achievement Corporation, the companies behind the National Dean's List.

I was surprised to learn how big this business is: for fiscal 2005, the American Achievement Group's "achievement publications" (Who's Who Among American High School Students, Who's Who Among American High School Students -- Sports Edition, The National Dean's List, Who's Who Among America’s Teachers, and The Chancellor's List) accounted for sales of $20.1 million.

And I was surprised to see a relatively frank acknowledgement of what it means to be "nominated":

We obtain nominations for our achievement publications from a wide variety of commercial and non-commercial sources, which we continuously update. One company that supplies a significant number of nominees to us for inclusion in our Who’s Who Among American High School Students publication has received an inquiry from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, relating to its supplying names and other personal information of high school students to commercial marketers. We have received a request from the FTC for information relating to this matter and are complying with this request.

Also of interest: the letters that "Leddy Fine" and I received state that "Only 1/2 of 1% of our nation's college students" are named to the National Dean's List. Form 10-K states that

The most recent 29th published edition [of The National Dean's List] honors almost 158,000 high-achieving students, representing in excess of 2,800 colleges and universities throughout the country.

That number would call for a population of 31.6 million college students. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, enrollment in degree-granting institutions in 2004 totalled 17.3 million.

Something is rotten in Texas (home of the American Achievement Group).

Update, November 9, 2007: A reader has informed me that the National Dean's List is no more. From the company website:

Educational Communications, Inc. has ceased all operations, including discontinuation of its publications for Who's Who Among American High School Students, Who's Who Among America's Teachers, and The National Dean's List, as well as the Educational Communications Scholarship Foundation.

The Internet Archive shows that Educational Communications, Inc. — or at least its website — was still functioning as of August 2007. Some quick Google searching turns up no details on the company's demise.

I feel sorry for the clerical workers, printers, and bindery workers whose lives will be altered by the demise of Educational Communications, Inc. But I'll still say good riddance to this company. It's mail from outfits such as EC, Inc. that can lead a student to mistake, say, a letter of invitation from Phi Beta Kappa for yet another sham honor. And it's the Internet that allows anyone with an online connection to look around and ask questions. (Type "national dean's list" into Google and see what happens.)

Related reading
Phi Beta What? (Wall Street Journal)

Related posts
Is this honor society legitimate?
The National Dean's List
The National Dean's List is dead

The National Dean's List

Two letters came in the mail today from an outfit calling itself The National Dean's List. Putting one and one together allows me to conclude that being on this dean's list is a deeply dubious honor.

The first letter is for me:



It would be nice to think that my college achievements are wowing this organization, almost thirty years after I graduated. But something else is going on. The second letter begins:



There is no one at our house named "Leddy Fine"; that name is simply my last name and my wife Elaine's last name (yes, I kept my name when we married). But we have a magazine subscription for "Leddy Fine" (the result of a clerical error), from a collegiate subscription service, one of those companies offering discounts for students and faculty. We have another subscription, in my name, from the same service. "Leddy Fine," like "Michael Leddy," is simply a name from a mailing list.

The National Dean's List thus seems to be little more than spam-marketing with a letterhead. There's a catch of course: to see your name in print, you need to buy a copy of the book ($69.95, or $84.95 "with my name in gold on the cover").

If I were a genuine high-achieving college student, I might not have reason to doubt the claims on the NDL website. For instance:

Being selected for nomination to The National Dean's List is an honor bestowed on outstanding college students by the professors, coaches and teachers who know their work best.

Every year, professors, deans and leaders of civic and community service organizations affiliated with post secondary institutions are invited to nominate outstanding students who have achieved "Dean's List" honors, or comparable academic achievement, have a "B+" average or are in the upper 10% of their classes.

But I'm no longer a high-achieving college student, and "Leddy Fine" never even shows up for classes, so I can only conclude that the National Dean's List is about as selective as a telephone book.

Update, May 5, 2007: There's more on the National Dean's List in this post: The National Dean's List again.

Update, November 9, 2007: A reader has informed me that the National Dean's List is no more. From the company website:

Educational Communications, Inc. has ceased all operations, including discontinuation of its publications for Who's Who Among American High School Students, Who's Who Among America's Teachers, and The National Dean's List, as well as the Educational Communications Scholarship Foundation.

The Internet Archive shows that Educational Communications, Inc. — or at least its website — was still functioning as of August 2007. Some quick Google searching turns up no details on the company's demise.

I feel sorry for the clerical workers, printers, and bindery workers whose lives will be altered by the demise of Educational Communications, Inc. But I'll still say good riddance to this company. It's mail from outfits such as EC, Inc. that can lead a student to mistake, say, a letter of invitation from Phi Beta Kappa for yet another sham honor. And it's the Internet that allows anyone with an online connection to look around and ask questions. (Type "national dean's list" into Google and see what happens.)

Related reading
Phi Beta What? (Wall Street Journal)

Related posts
Is this honor society legitimate?
The National Dean's List again
The National Dean's List is dead

Overheard

In a parking lot, a discussion of condensed soups:

"I always take the straight-up noodle."

All "Overheard" posts (via Pinboard)

Euphemism

From Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day:

The Word of the Day for May 1 is:

euphemism \YOO-fuh-miz-um\ noun: the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant; also : the expression so substituted

Example sentence: Aunt Helen would never say that someone had "died"; she preferred to communicate the unpleasant news with euphemisms like "passed on."

Did you know? "Euphemism" derives from the Greek word "euphemos," which means "auspicious" or "sounding good." The first part of "euphemos" is the Greek prefix "eu-," meaning "well." The second part is "pheme," a Greek word for "speech" that is itself a derivative of the verb "phanai," meaning "to speak." Among the numerous linguistic cousins of "euphemism" on the "eu-" side of the family are "eulogy," "euphoria," and "euthanasia"; on the "phanai" side, its kin include "prophet" and "aphasia" ("loss of the power to understand words").

Merriam-Webster might have quoted George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" (1946):

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

Orwell of course did not live to hear of extraordinary renditions and enhanced interrogation techniques.

Update, May 25, 2007: A reader of Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish reports that

"enhanced interrogation techniques" is a fairly decent English translation of the Gestapo euphemism "verschaerfte Vernehmung," which was the code word for torture in the Third Reich.

Trumpeter swans in the news

News from Des Moines:

Two trumpeter swans have a new home at Great Ape Trust of Iowa and after they've had a chance to settle in, they'll soon have new names, thanks to their bonobo neighbors. . . .

Naming of the swans will be decided by the family of bonobos living at Great Ape Trust. Once the bonobos have had an opportunity to observe the swans, the apes will select two names -- either of their choosing or from a recommended list. Dr. Karyl Swartz, resident scientist at The Trust, is coordinating the naming project with the bonobos.

"The bonobos are extremely sensitive to their environment and we feel it is important that they are informed of any changes to that environment," said Swartz. "From their home, the bonobos overlook the lake where the swans will live. By informing them of the arrival of the swans, talking to them about what the birds are like, and allowing them an opportunity to participate in the project through naming the birds, we are providing the bonobos with control over their environment."

Any news of trumpeter swans will catch the attention of a Van Dyke Parks fan, as one such swan appears in the lyrics of "Surf's Up":

The music hall -- A costly bow.
The music all is lost for now,
To a muted trumpeter swan.

Columnated ruins domino!

"Surf's Up" may be found on SMiLE (music by Brian Wilson, words by Van Dyke Parks).

DNR Releases Trumpeter Swans at Great Ape Trust, Bonobos to Name Them (Great Ape Trust)

Related post
Riparian