This weekend I attended a departmental gathering (perhaps one of the most enjoyable of these sorts of things, ever) with my former professors and now colleagues. In particular, it was funny to hear Tom Duggan (the Grand Ole Opry of R's philosophy department) relate a story from one of his first outings as a Jesuit Scholastic, which involved scaring the living crap out of a study hall full of freshman boys. And one of the freshman boys in this story is the father of one of my former classmates and acquaintances. This acquaintance of mine won the venerable "Mr. Regis" competition by stuffing 78 grapes in his mouth, which I - in my co-hosting Vanna White get up (an old prom dress) - had to catch as they came out of his mouth in a hail of spit and grape juice. Memories. Pretty entertaining, if I do say so myself.
Speaking of memories, AV and I are s-l-o-w-l-y making our way through The War. We just finished the second episode last night, and one thing I found myself enjoying immensely was the color photographs and color film, particularly of Tunisia. It's a habit of students of history to imagine things in black and white (or in bland half-color, thank you Steven Spielberg*), thanks to newsreel images. It's a surprise and a kind of visual shock to see events of WWII recorded in color. We are still with last week's observations about all the foley work (Crash! Bang! Boom! Explode three times for effect!). But, the stories are still good and riveting, and I even teared up a little bit when I saw Rosie burning holes in airplane parts. Women's lib, man!
*The notable exception is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998), which is in full color and features a pre-JC Jim Caveziel in a heartbreaking role. It's Malick, so it's poetry and amazing, but I'm not sure if it aspires to be the historical document that Saving Private Ryan (also 1998) does.
In other news, I had "the talk" with one of my classes about the persistent text messaging. One of our class meetings last week was an absolute zoo - people were talking, texting (you know, as if I can't see what you're doing), sleeping, the whole works. It's exhausting to try and teach in those conditions, because it's so damned distracting. I told my students as much this afternoon, and as I was giving the talk I'm pretty sure that one of the students was sending a text message. AV and I had an enjoyable conversation with another teacher this weekend, and she suggested a kind of in-school scrambler for cell phone signals. It's like the TV-B-Gone but for beleaguered teachers. A battle I'll never win, I guess.
I'm planning to spend at least part of the evening watching the ROCKIES hopefully pull out one of the most exciting playoff chases in recent memory. I need something to distract me from the a-miserable Mets' catastrophic collapse yesterday. This picture, which was on the front of this morning's NY Times, really is worth a thousand words:
PHOTO: JOHN DUNN - NEW YORK TIMES
2 comments:
This is total Karma, as I recall an entire logic class in which you engaged in the pre-texting activity of note writing.
Postscript - I failed that class with a literal F.
Post Postscript - I later asked the same teacher who failed me to write a letter of recommendation for grad school - Bad Idea Jeans...
Karma it is, my friend.
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