Stephen Sondheim on education

Stephen Sondheim, in the HBO documentary Six by Sondheim (dir. James Lapine, 2013): “All education is just about making people curious. That’s all it’s about.”

Two related posts
Stephen Sondheim on pencils, paper
Stephen Sondheim’s writing habits

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014)

Lauren Bacall, quoted in The Daily Telegraph, March 2, 1988:

“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.”

The New York Times has an obituary.

[Not an apocryphal quotation: it appears in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (2011).]

Tim Parks on “reading upward”

The novelist and writer Tim Parks writes about what he calls “reading upward,” a belief about reading habits that is dear to many people who teach literature. Parks represents this belief like so: “‘Frankly, I don’t mind what they’re reading, Twilight, Harry Potter, whatever. So long as they are reading something there’s at least a chance that one day they’ll move on to something better.’”

In the teaching world, the idea of reading upward often leads to a preoccupation with gateway books. The way to get “them” interested in, say, Charles Dickens, is to start with, say, J. K. Rowling. Uh, no. There are such things as gateway books, books that open up new territory: I’ve described my first acquaintance with Charles Bukowski’s poetry in just that way. But the way to get interested in, say, Dickens is by reading Dickens. There is no other first step needed.

[When speaking of students, many teachers use the pronouns they and them without an antecedent: “I put them into small groups.” (Put who into small groups?) I prefer to say “my students.” And I prefer to think of the class itself as a small group.]

Robin Williams (1951–2014)

The actor and comedian Robin Williams has died, an apparent suicide.

So much sorrow in the world, far and near. In the words of Frank O’Hara: No more dying.

A request for good vibrations

Elaine’s brother Marshall Fine was in a horrific car accident last week. We learned about it late Saturday night and spent Sunday in Kentucky, visiting him in the hospital and retrieving his stuff from his car. We were assisted by an incredibly kind state trooper and an equally kind tow-operator.

The injuries are grievous, but there is much reason to think that Marshall will recover. If you have some good vibrations to spare, please send them his way.

*

7:55 p.m.: As I wrote in a comment earlier today, there’s less reason to be hopeful than there was when I wrote this post. But Marshall is getting excellent care, and we are still hopeful.

Here’s just one reason why someone might reconsider adjunct teaching

At the community college where my wife Elaine taught for a number of years, eight adjunct faculty have just learned that some or all of their fall classes have been canceled. They have received this news three weeks before the fall semester begins.

Adjunct is a strange term: what’s adjunct is supplemental, not essential. Yet so-called adjunct faculty are now a substantial majority of college faculty. A more accurate term: contingent faculty. As the AAUP says, such faculty serve “in insecure, unsupported positions with little job security and few protections for academic freedom.” See the previous paragraph.

Related reading
The Adjunct Project (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

[The reasons for the cancellations: budget cuts, declining enrollment.]

Rogeting

A new direction in academic misconduct: Rogeting, the use of a thesaurus when plagiarizing. The results, as reported in The Guardian, are both sad and hilarious. The stellar example, from Chris Sadler, the Middlesex University lecturer who coined the term Rogeting : “sinister buttocks.” In other words, “left behind.”

That students could hope to succeed by means of such substitutions suggests that something is broken — in their understanding of how language works, and in their ability to imagine a reader’s response to their writing.

Thanks to Ian Bagger for sending The Guardian article my way.

A related post
Beware of the saurus (Don’t hunt for “better words”)

Where were you when Nixon resigned?

[Andy Warhol, Vote McGovern. 1972. Screen print on Arches 88 paper. 42 x 42 in. From The Andy Warhol Museum. First spotted at Ordinary Finds.]

I know where I was on August 9, 1974: at home watching television. I remember the farewell speech — “My mother was a saint” — as painful to watch. I despised the man, but I took no pleasure in this sad spectacle. His life was in ruins, and there was his family, standing off to the side having to see it.

I have more vivid memories of the day before the resignation, the day Nixon announced that he would resign. I was working as my dad’s helper (tile work) at the house of a woman named Mrs. Zargami, somewhere in northern New Jersey. We had a transistor radio on and heard the news — in the afternoon, I think — that Nixon was going to address the nation that night. Mrs. Zargami gave me a twenty-dollar bill at the end of the day. I wondered whether she realized that my dad was paying me. We drove home and we all had dinner, and later that night we turned on the TV.

Where were you when Richard Nixon resigned?

Richard Nixon on the Irish
Six degrees of Richard Nixon

[Thank you again, Mrs. Zarghami. And how do I remember her name? My dad has quizzed me on it over the years. Thanks, Dad.]

Handwrytten

Handwrytten is an app for iOS:

Handwrytten allows you to send real cards and notes with your message written in pen and ink. Just select a quality card, type your message and hit send! Then, our robotic handwriting machines will “wryte” your message in realistic handwriting on the card, address the envelope and place it in the mail with a real stamp.

And the happy recipient may soon begin to wonder why these cards from various senders all have the same postmark and the same “handwriting.”

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)

[As for Handwrytten’s claim that “it's even cheaper than running to the store yourself and buying a card”: you could buy a box of note cards and envelopes and come out way ahead, as would those receiving your genuinely handwritten messages. But why is “even cheaper” better anyway?]

Domestic comedy

“Nothing says ‘summer’ like a big pot of stew.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[It’s true too.]