English 101, FAC, Calvin College, 1981

Place: FAC, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI

Date: 1981

Prof: Gordon Bordewyk

My freshman English teacher, Professor Gordon Bordewyk, assigned us a small task: Find an article, examine the first and last paragraph, and analyze how well they adhere to good essay practices.

Now, I was an avid reader of TV Guide and read it cover to cover every week, even subscribed when I was a freshman. So, instead of trek to the library, I picked an article from that magazine to analyze.

I'm sure Prof Bordewyk, whom I liked very much, thought I hastily thumbed through a copy in the dorm TV room, chose an article at random, and did a brain dump at the typewriter.

That was not at all true (I actually wanted to write for TV at the time), but it probably looked that way.

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This is the same Professor Bordewyk I wrote about before and who remembered me by name many years later. Either I made an impression on him, or he had a great memory. (I hope, if the former, it was a good one).

He had an eclectic pipe collection in his office, at least a dozen. That end of the hall in Calvin's English Department smelled delightfully of pipe tobacco. If whirring mental gears produced a scent, it would smell like that.

I smoked a pipe in those days.

I used to be an English teacher. I think teaching core courses is among the most thankless jobs one can have, yet may occasionally yield a promising glimmer.

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If freshman English is tough to teach, it's even tougher to learn for budding wannabe writers, which included yours truly. I thought I knew it all and was being held back by talentless peers and an intentionally constricting maze of rules that led to creative dead ends.

Of course, now that I'm on the other side of the life-expectancy bell curve,  I know better, and actually look back fondly at my professors, like Gordon Bordewyk, who gently corrected me in the classroom, for I was conceited (if well-intentioned), and that sort of character defect never helps a writer.

It's no coincidence that "humility" resembles "humiliation."

But my humiliation was entirely a dialog with myself. Prof. Bordewyk needn't have been kind; he could have ripped me a new adjective, but he didn't.

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I positively loathed using index cards when writing essays. It's just not how I organize my thoughts. ENGL101 was the last time I used them.

It was a good tool to have in my toolbox, but I'd worn it to a nub by the time I left high school.

[2014-05-22]

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Did Hans really love Anna?

Hans and Anna from Disney's Frozen

I was sure after repeated watchings of Frozen that Hans genuinely liked Anna.

If you've seen the film, you'll recall the scene in which Hans reappears from under the overturned boat with a broad, smitten smile.

Hans smiles from under a boat after he
meets Anna in Disney's Frozen

A friend and I analyzed this relationship a bit, after I mentioned that Disney scored a miss by not hinting at Hans's true motives, but he said he thought he detected this in "Love is an Open Door" when Anna says "sandwiches" where we would expect her to say "sentences," and Hans replies "That's what I was going to say!"  (ie, she's falling in love and he's pretending to).


Love is an Open Door

That's possible, but I'm not so sure. I interpreted this as sort of a to-may-to/to-mah-to reference, ie, the Disney version of "I Remember It Well" from Gigi.

Gigi, "I Remember It Well"

My son Charlie said he pegged Hans for the bad guy right off the bat, but that may be because every Disney film has a bad guy (or gal) and we're trained to look for them.

At any rate, I haven't detected any unambiguous clues that Hans was using Anna to gain the throne, which just *might* be an intentional (if subtle) metaphor for "love is blind" or "you can't judge a book by it's cover" (Hans is the handsome one, Kristoff the more rugged and simple one).

I just cannot see sword-wielding murderous Hans in that guy under the boat.

[2014-05-23]

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Of tardigrades and why death is like chocolate ice cream.

Scanning electron micrograph of a tardigrade (water bear). Image: Eye of Science/Science Source

I haven't had the chance to watch much Cosmos (Sundays at 9pm on FOX, which is also bath time for the girls), but I have caught a bit, and although most of it is a beautifully animated review of popular science, there are some things I didn't know:

* Uruk is cognate with Iraq.

* The tardigrade (water bear) has survived all earth's extinctions and even trips into space.

* Water is chemically a catalyst.

[2014-05-22]

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Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I don't see myself, I see Dad, and I see him in bed, tired and thinning and dying.

I don't think of him as being dead, however, just not around right now, which is something quite different; and I don't have to convince myself to feel this way, I simply do, and don't question it.

Like him, I have no fear of what someday awaits. I can't explain it, it just is.

Just as one might say they like chocolate ice cream. Why do you like chocolate ice cream? you ask. I don't know. I just know I do. Does it matter why?

[2014-05-23]

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I'll be back (and utter depravity)

Ahhhhhnold with topless girl on his shoulders (censored). If you want to see the original, it's here >

Back in 7th grade, at Bethel Christian School, when it was still at 737 E 26th street, we used to go the downtown Erie library once a month, as our little school, which was also the church, didn't have one.

Our accompanying teachers, usually Miss E and Mr B (who eventually married), sometimes monitored our reading choices and would prevent us from checking out with something they deemed inappropriate. But the trip was usually not for entertainment, but to research an assignment.

Well, on one trip, someone managed to check out a copy of Pumping Iron, which included a large picture of a naked girl sitting on the shoulders of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. I have to tell you, that book circulated among the 7th grade boys at Bethel Christian School faster than you can say "puberty," until Miss E confiscated it while expressing her utter disgust.

I remember feeling like a poster child for utter depravity, which is a good Baptist term with a few connotations, but on this occasion meant "filthy dirty disgusting pervert."

[2014-05-20]

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Schlemiel, schlimazel, hasenpfeffer incorporated

Laverne & Shirley on the cover of TV Guide in August 1982

I learned only recently what "schlemiel, schlimazel" means, which, if you are of a certain age, was permanently ingrained between your ears by weekly viewings of the 70's TV sitcom Laverne & Shirley.

schlemiel: an inept clumsy person (Yiddish shlemil from Hebrew שלא מועיל "ineffective")

schlimazel: a chronically unlucky person (Hebrew שלימזל and מזל mazzāl 'luck')

And "hasenpfeffer incorporated"? Just nonsensical words that together with schlemiel and schlimazel make up a children's hopscotch rhyme.

(Sound silly? Try explaining "hickory dickory dock" to someone who's first language isn't English.)

Source >

Laverne & Shirley Show Opening

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Did you know that if you're working with Hebrew text in Google docs and cursor through it left-to-right, the direction of the cursor reverses over the Hebrew word and moves right to left, the way Hebrew is read?

Is that cool or what.

[2014-05-20]

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