A teaching dream

I was teaching a college English class in my Brooklyn elementary school, in a corner classroom with a high ceiling, hanging light fixtures, and large windows and shades on two walls. We were reading a Hemingway novel; I don’t know which one. As I collected some in-class writing, we got onto the subject of regimentation and rules in high school. A great spontaneous discussion ensued, during which I realized that I had forgotten to bring my Hemingway. I kept that realization to myself. I mentioned two points about the novel as the time ran out and the room emptied. One point: a description of a tattooed character in Hemingway owed something to Djuna Barnes’s novel Nightwood . The other point I cannot remember.

All this time I was being, as they say in education, “observed”: a colleague was sitting in the back of the room watching me at work. When the class ended, his only suggestion was that I make greater use of the blackboard, a suggestion that seemed to me wildly irrelevant to what had just gone on (as of course it was). I explained that I had gotten away from using the blackboard in my teaching.

I can think of a number of elements that play a part in this dream: a recent New York Times feature on the first day of school in New York City, a letter to a friend that mentioned the debilitating effects of high school on new college students (who ask where they should write their name on in-class work), a fambly member’s student-teaching, and my liking for Nightwood , a novel I taught several times in lieu of The Sun Also Rises . My reasoning: students could read and make something of The Sun Also Rises on their own at any time. But they probably wouldn’t get another opportunity to read Nightwood , which offers another picture, and to my mind a much more compelling picture, of a lost generation.

Related reading, via Pinboard
All OCA dream posts
All OCA P.S. 131 posts
Smith going backward (from Nightwood)

[This dream marks my first classroom appearance since retiring.]

A plumbing tale

I came across a version of this story in an old textbook. (I like old textbooks.) The story circulates widely, but it’s new to me. Here is a telling that names a source, though not necessarily an origin:

Dr. William B. Bean, who in the Archives of Internal Medicine often tilted a lancet at the writing operations of his fellow healers, has passed on the story of a New York plumber who had cleaned out some drains with hydrochloric acid and then wrote to a chemical research bureau, inquiring, “Was there any possibility of harm?” As told by Dr. Bean, the story continues:

“The first answer was, ‘The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputably established but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence.’ The plumber was proud to get this and thanked the people for approving of his method. The dismayed research bureau rushed another letter to him saying, ‘We cannot assume responsibility for the production of a toxic and noxious residue with hydrochloric acid. We beg leave to suggest to you the employment of an alternative procedure.’ The plumber was more delighted than ever and wrote to thank them for reiterating their approval. By this time the bureau got worried about what might be happening to New York’s sewers and called in a third man, and older scientist, who wrote simply, ‘Don’t use hydrochloric acid. It eats hell out of pipes.’”

Theodore Bernstein, The Careful Writer (1965).

This post is for Fresca, who likes clarity.

[William Bennett Bean was described in 1974 as “a true renaissance man: an articulate clinician, a scholar of the classics, a masterful teller of tales, and a prodigious writer of stories.”]

Eleven years young

Orange Crate Art turns eleven later today. My daughter Rachel, eleven years ago:

“If you’re going to be this uptight and worried about it, you’re not going to be a very happy blogger. Just say ‘This is my new blog; I’m trying it out. Thanks to my son and daughter. I hope it works out.’”

Rachel was (and is) wise beyond her years.

What’s it like to be eleven? Well, there’s “growing maturity and confidence built on the experiences of earlier years,” along with “increasingly advanced cognitive skills and emotional maturity.” Yet one “may still be unsettled by major change.” (True, that.) Do “major bodily and hormonal changes” count as “major change”? I should think so.

As for being “acutely self-conscious in public,” Orange Crate Art has always been acutely self-conscious in public. No wonder: it’s never not been in public. And when it takes along an umbrella and there’s no rain, it feels like a jerk.

Thanks (again) to my fambly: to Rachel, for suggesting Orange Crate Art as a name; to Rachel and Ben, for showing me the basics of HTML; and to Elaine, whose sense of what’s appropriate is always appropriate. And thanks (again) to Van Dyke Parks, who was generous and enthusiastic about my use of his song’s title as this blog’s title.

And thank you, reader, old or new.

[Descriptions of a generic eleven-year-old from WebMD.]

Looking at schools

The xkcd comic University Website captures in Venn and ink “things on the front page of a university website” and “things people go to the front page looking for.”

A good sense of a school cannot really be had from its website, which might present a Potemkin village of excellence and good cheer. Nor can magazine rankings or a tool such as College Scorecard help all that much. My idiosyncratic suggestion: read the student newspaper, which will almost certainly be available online. Are the articles, columns, and editorials the work of students who are capable writers? Does their work suggest a good grasp of current events, culture, and history? Do articles focus on campus problems not mentioned in official sources?

Often assembled with little or no oversight from full-fledged grown-ups (faculty advisors), a student newspaper may offer an unfiltered (or just lightly filtered) picture of a school and its community. Prospective students and their families would do well to spend time reading.

Contrapuntalism in Japan

Sean at Contrapuntalism visits Tokyo stationery stores, one, and another one. Winning!

AP-Chicago feud

In the “news”: “At this time we have reason to believe the killings were gang-related and carried out by adherents of both the AP and Chicago styles, part of a vicious, bloody feud to establish control over the grammar and usage guidelines governing American English.”

Thanks to George Bodmer for this story.

Garlic, wild-style

Elaine writes about wild garlic.

Domestic comedy

“You can’t objectify me. You’re too subjectified!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Irving’s Toy & Card Shop

Watching the news last night: Brookline! Specifically, a story about Irving’s Toy & Card Shop. Ethel Weiss’s store (founded with her husband) has been in business on Harvard Street since 1939. Our fambly was in there some years ago. Now I want to go again. Watch: Candy shop owner going strong at 101 (CBS Evening News).

Irving’s has a YouTube presence: a report made for a college class by Steve Burns, and a mini-documentary by Brookline Interactive Group.

The World Book Encyclopedia

This Atlantic item makes me miss the World Book Encyclopedia of my childhood. The World Book was great for school reports, and perfect for the reading room, so-called.