Actually, the one I had as a kid has been nearly washed to death and the decal is faded and degraded. This pristine example was an Ebay purchase and is as good as new.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Not a Stein of the Day
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
iPod decisions
I’m edging sideways in a crablike Cancerian fashion toward ordering a 64GB iPod Touch from Apple.com.
And, since they offer free engraving, I’m chewing on what to do with my two lines of engraving space.
I don’t have any favorite quotes that rise to the level of wanting them engraved on the back of an iPod, so my name and point of contact is the logical choice.
When Maria bought her 80GB classic iPod about three years ago, she had them engrave her name and home phone number on the back. In less than a year’s time, the Thorntown, Ind. phone number was a thing of the past because we’d moved to Arkansas.
Being mindful that things change, sometimes very quickly and unexpectedly, I think I’ll just go with my name and my Gmail email address. I realize something could happen that would drive me away from the Gmail address, but it’s the closest thing to a stable contact point I have, so I guess I’ll gamble on it outlasting the iPod Touch.
FOX News continues to kick cable ass
Viewers seem to agree that flakes like Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Keith Olberman, Nancy Grace, Joy Behar, and even Larry King, are largely irrelevant.
From tvbythenumbers.com:
Morning programs (6:00AM-9:00AM) P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
FOX & Friends- 1,042,000 viewers (372,000) (596,000)
American Morning- 393,000 viewers (150,000) (220,000)
Morning Joe- 291,000 viewers (108,000) (177,000)
Squawk Box- 134,000 viewers (34,000) (70,000)
Morning Express w/ Robin Meade- 351,000 viewers (228,000) (230,000)
5PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
Glenn Beck – 2,858,000 viewers (835,000) (1,448,000)
Situation Room—556,000 viewers (89,000) (158,000)
Hardball w/ C. Matthews —457,000 viewers (a scratch w/46,000) (175,000)
Fast Money —237,000 viewers (56,000) (122,000)
Prime News —246,000 viewers (119,000) (160,000)
6PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
Special Report w/ Bret Baier – 2,671,000 viewers (629,000) (1,232,000)
Situation Room—557,000 viewers (109,000) (146,000)
Ed Show —529,000 viewers (112,000) (233,000)
Mad Money— 169,000 viewers (66,000) (103,000)
Prime News – 238,000 viewers (97,000) (149,000)
7PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
The Fox Report w/ Shep – 2,133,000 viewers (559,000) (1,031,000)
Situation Room – 524,000 viewers (158,000) (191,000)
Hardball w/ C. Matthews – 674,000 viewers (205,000) (312,000)
Kudlow Report – 176,000 viewers (53,000) (76,000)
Issues – 392,000 viewers (129,000) (191,000)
8PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
The O’Reilly Factor – 4,366,000 viewers (1,154,000) (2,093,000)
Campbell Brown – 556,000 viewers (141,000) (190,000)
Countdown w/ K. Olbermann – 1,154,000 viewers (302,000) (620,000)
Planet of the Apps — a scratch w/93,000 viewers (a scratch w/48,000) (57,000)
Nancy Grace – 689,000 viewers (245,000) (365,000)
9 PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
Hannity – 2,731,000 viewers (734,000) (1,303,000)
Larry King Live —946,000 viewers (178,000) (311,000)
Rachel Maddow Show —976,000 viewers (230,000) (451,000)
Welcome to Macintosh — a scratch w/66,000 viewers (a scratch w/34,000) (a scratch w/41,000)
Joy Behar – 655,000 viewers (167,000) (301,000)
10 PM P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
On the Record w/ Greta—1,947,000 viewers (478,000) (839,000)
Anderson Cooper 360 — 759,000 viewers (225,000) (317,000)
Countdown w/ K. Olbermann – 661,000 viewers (181,000) (258,000)
Put It On The Map (9:00 – 9:30pm) – a scratch w/95,000 viewers (a scratch w/35,000) (52,000)
Welcome to Macintosh (9:30 – 10:00pm) — a scratch w/66,000 viewers (a scratch w/34,000) (a scratch w/41,000)
Nancy Grace –439,000 viewers (155,000) (271,000)
11 PM P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
The O’Reilly Factor— 1,656,000 viewers (448,000) (812,000)
Anderson Cooper 360 – 483,000 viewers (184,000) (228,000)
Rachel Maddow Show —458,000 viewers (157,000) (242,000)
Mad Money – a scratch w/76,000 viewers (a scratch w/51,000) (a scratch w/46,000)
Showbiz Tonight– 370,000 viewers (143,000) (176,000)
P2+ = viewers over the age of 2
(25-54) = Adults 25-54 viewing
(35-64) = Adults 35-64 viewing
Prime Time = 8-11pm
Kind of a disappointment
The staging was spectacular. I’m always amazed at how quickly those folks at the Super Bowl can assemble and tear down a huge stage. The lasers and fireworks and lights were dazzling.
But the sound mix was horrible. I guess that goes with the territory when there’s no time for a sound check and the guy on the mixing board has to do it all on the fly.
I also thought Pete looked like he’s been putting on weight and would have looked better without the silly hat and the floppy shirt that exposed his belly whenever he did his signature windmill. It pains me to say anything negative about Pete Townshend because I consider him the greatest composer and guitarist in the history of rock and roll. We share the same birth year (1945) and he is a continuing inspiration for everyone of My Generation.
After the game, I put on my DVD of The Who concert in Indianapolis in March, 2007, to remind me just how spectacular Pete, Roger, Zak and Pino can be when properly presented. It still stands out as the best, most exciting concert I’ve ever attended. I guess that’s why it’s such a hard act to follow.
Stein of the Day
I do know, however, that I didn’t buy it. I would never buy a cliche stein like this. Apparently the maker isn’t proud of it either because there’s no maker’s mark on the bottom.
Judging from the cheap graphics, I’d say this “gift” or “souvenir” stein has never been in Germany and came from somewhere in the Third World, most likely China.
It has no connection with history or the brewing industry or any other link that makes it even remotely interesting. I keep it around as a reminder of what a stein isn’t.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
No Weiner Delight
There will be no Weiner-Delight, the Arkansas Education Board ruled yesterday.
The board unanimously rejected a merger proposal that would have created one of the most humorously bizarre school district names in the nation.
School officials in tiny Wiener, situated south by southwest of 
Not wanting to lose their identity by being absorbed into one or more adjacent school districts, they finally settled on the idea of a consolidation with the Delight School District, which also has an enrollment under 350.
But Delight is about 200 road miles southwest of Weiner – a 3 hour 37 minute drive according to Google Maps. It was the first proposed merger of non-contiguous school districts in Arkansas history.
School officials believed the proposed merger would benefit both districts through the use of distance learning, which presumably would expand curriculum offerings.
The Arkansas Education Board didn’t buy it.
The two school corporations will most likely be absorbed by their neighbors, losing their individual identities, whether they like it or not.
Well, it does look pretty…
This is the scene out our back door and beyond the fence this morning as the first rays of the rising sun light up the snow-clad trees.
Needless to say, this is turning into a remarkably snowy winter for northeast Arkansas and there’s more in the forecast for late this week.
I’m stuck at home all day, unless I decided to take a chance with my snow-challenged Honda del Sol. The overnight high was 31 at midnight and the temperature has been dropping steadily as a cold front rushes into this part of the Mid-South. That means last night’s 
So far, I only have one new book order to fill and it can wait until tomorrow if necessary. Ditto picking up the mail.
Stein of the Day
It’s not really a stein since it’s made of plastic, but we’re getting down to seeds and stems here and this may be the last Stein of the Day.
Sorry if you were expecting one yesterday. It was a Steinless Day.
I picked this one up cheap on Ebay. The lid lever has a button that, when pushed, makes the frog say “Bud-weis-er” like in the old Bud commercials. I rescued it from a box in the garage last night just for this occasion.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Weather and stuff
JONESBORO, Ark. – The air is full of snow, but it’s not sticking to the pavement. We have maybe 4” on the bare ground and there’s more on the way.
I’m back in town, having gone home after lunch to let the dogs out and pack and ship an Amazon.com book sale.
I was shocked this morning when Geni.com, the genealogical web site where I’ve created a family tree, notified me that my cousin Jo Ann, is about to turn 79. Holy crap! How can I have a cousin who’s pushing 80?
And then I remembered my cousin Norman Lauchner, who was a young naval officer in World War II and spent the war as a Japanese prisoner of war after the fall of Corregidor, is something like 89 years old. That’s assuming he’s still living. I’ve heard nothing to the contrary, but there’s no guarantee anyone would let me know if he died.
I did a Google search for him and found this story from the Rancho Palos Verdes Daily Breeze:
December 9, 2005
Nick Green, Palos Verdes Daily Breeze
For much of the 50 years after Norman Lauchner's liberation from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines, where he spent three years in captivity during World War II, he spoke little of his ordeal.
"When you get out of there, your initial thought is to erase it all," said the 84-year-old Rancho Palos Verdes resident.
But a chance meeting at a Torrance store with fellow Rancho Palos Verdes resident Joe Monfiletto, a World War II military memorabilia collector with an unlikely link to Lauchner, has prompted the veteran to willingly dredge up the painful memories of his harrowing experience.
"Joe was the first person I met who really knew what I was talking about,"Lauchner said.
It was on Monfiletto's 64th birthday in September that the two met as they wheeled their respective shopping carts out the doors of the Torrance Costco.
The pair found their cars parked almost next to each other in the store's lot.
Striking up a conversation, Lauchner complimented Monfiletto on his choice of vehicle -- a Toyota -- and observed that he handled advertising for the company for a decade until his 1985 retirement.
Surmising Lauchner's age, Monfiletto casually asked whether he had served during World War II.
"His response was, 'Not only was I in World War II, but I was in a POW camp in the Philippines,' " Monfiletto recalled.
"Which one?" Monfiletto asked.
"Bilibid," responded Lauchner, mentioning the name of a large camp on the outskirts of Manila where he was held after the fall of a U.S. base on Corregidor, a strategically located island in Manila Bay.
"Wow," Monfiletto said.
A couple of years before, Monfiletto, who is married to a Filipina, had come into the possession of an unusual autograph book secretly compiled by a former prisoner in Bilibid.
Its fragile pages, hand sewn into a cover made from a Japanese army uniform, contained the signatures of about 200 POWs.
Monfiletto researched his unusual find, hoping to learn more about it.
Lauchner did not recall signing the book, but after chatting for a while, the pair exchanged e-mail addresses.
To Monfiletto's surprise he discovered Lauchner's signature, rank and hometown written in neat, cursive handwriting in pencil within the autograph book.
Monfiletto called Lauchner.
"You were a Navy ensign and you're from Frankfort, Indiana," Monfiletto told Lauchner, much to his astonishment.
Monfiletto had always nurtured an interest in the Pacific Theater.
His wife had an uncle who died on the infamous Bataan Death March.
Monfiletto lived in Japan for five years. And even as a child, Monfiletto devoured history books, not novels.
"The interest was there, the history was there and I started reading more and more about the war in the Pacific to where you might call it an obsession," he said.
Over 35 years, Monfiletto avidly acquired books, medals, swords, dozens of historic flags and the like.
Then a Torrance memorabilia dealer, knowing of his interest, offered him the autograph book.
"When I got it, there was no indication of which POW camp it came from," Monfiletto said.
"Part of the excitement of the whole thing is researching things like this."
Piece by piece, using a spreadsheet of the names he painstakingly compiled, Monfiletto discovered the book's origin.
Meanwhile, Lauchner had done his best to suppress his memories of his time in captivity that began at age 22.
The few mementos that remained from that period of his life were consigned to exile in his attic.
A deck of cards his mother had sent, worn from countless games of solitaire, served only to underline the isolation he felt stuck in a prison hospital bed with potentially life-threatening kidney stones.
A tiny ragged pair of shorts graphically illustrated how Lauchner's weight had dropped from 165 pounds to a mere 117 pounds, a consequence of a meager ration of two bowls of rice and water a day.
And a fragile scrapbook he secretly filled with lists of books he read and songs he heard symbolized the unrelenting passage of indistinguishable humid days.
"It's not a reminder of a happy time," said his wife, Gail. "He didn't really want to ever have them out."
But something about Monfiletto's knowledge struck a chord with Lauchner.
"That unusually strange situation that put me, my (shopping) cart and my car so close to yours was really great," Lauchner wrote in an e-mail.
"This was the first time I've met someone who really knew about Bilibid and Corregidor."
Monfiletto, Lauchner and their wives met for a steak dinner.
They talked. And talked.
"He can relate to Joe, and Joe understands what he is talking about and the pressures he went through," Gail said.
"He knows the places probably better than Norm does because he's studied it."
But now the history he had wanted to forget -- and his role in it - - has been given new life.
For her husband, Gail said, his relationship with Monfiletto is a form of therapy.
For Monfiletto, the friendship is an opportunity to put to practical use a hobby and knowledge he had long cultivated.
"The chase (of memorabilia) is important, but the research of this stuff is even more important," he said. "You become part of that experience.
"It's often said that 30,000 World War II veterans die every month," Monfiletto added.
"People throw history away -- this is part of keeping it alive."
A bad Indiana winter flashback
A couple of days after the previous weekend’s snow melted to reveal bare ground, we awoke this morning to another 3” or so of still-falling snow.
Naturally, all of the schools are closed.
I drove Maria to work, not because I don’t have the highest regard for her Hoosier snow-driving skills, but because I want to be mobile
We had some friends over last night for the Super Bowl and, of course, the halftime show by The Who. The Who’s staging was stunning but the sound mix left a lot to be desired. Even so, it was the highlight of the evening for me. I was rooting for the Colts, being from Indiana and all, but I’m just fine with a New Orleans win. They were long overdue and seem to be handling their victory graciously.
I’m having a parfait and coffee breakfast at McDonald’s before getting on with the rest of my day.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Stein of the Day
This is a lidded half-liter seidel (If it’s stoneware, it’s a stein. If it’s glass, it’s a seidel.) with a small BMW roundel on the lid.
I don’t remember whether I got his from a BMW dealer or on Ebay. Probably Ebay. Maybe I’ll use it while watching the Colts win the Super Bowl this evening.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Welcome to the post-literate society
Jack Miller
Normandale Community College
Bloomington, Minnesota
Center of the American Experiment
Minneapolis
January 2010
Of the 70 or so students currently taking my “developmental” (a much-used euphemism for “remedial”) writing classes, Debra, Andy, and Po might serve as models for at least some of the types.
Debra is 45 years old, has recently seen the last of her children move away from home, and is newly enrolled in college to prepare for a late career. She is hoping to get into the very popular and over-booked nursing program, and she is anxious about everything pertaining to my course—compositions done in class, compositions done at home, every other assignment large or small, the readings, the minutiae of the syllabus, the distant but looming exams that can make or break a term. In a recent piece, she wrote, “My friend been through many bad experience which helped her be strong, she was in a abusive relationship with a man. This made her careful of all of them.” Speculating on her own future, she added, “If I was to start a business of my own it would be a hair shop. I would choose a hair shop because it seems fun. A advantage it would have is, the stylist would be good. I know alot of hair stylist. My personally dont know how to do hair that good, that would be a problem I’d have to overcome. My idea prolly wont come true, because I just wouldnt take the time to put it all together.”
Twenty-year-old Andy works as a part-time mechanic and is unsure which of two roads he’ll go down—becoming a full-time mechanic with hopes of having his own garage some day, or throwing his lot into the academic world as an entering junior at Minnesota State University Mankato. Andy is diligent and not someone to dash off an assignment as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, in a recent composition done in class, he wrote, “She is a very smart women, she has solved many cases at her job her last case is about one of the worst criminal in the town. These fact makes her very suspecous.”
Po is a first-generation American whose parents brought her with them from Vietnam when she was nearly ten. They continue to struggle with English, and their future is bounded by their linguistic limitations. Her father works as a custodian at my college and can still get only a little past “Good morning.” Her prospects, though, are widening quickly, and she foresees a four-year degree followed by graduate school, if the scholarships fall in line as they have for some of her friends. Regarding her great-uncle, she wrote, “I don’t know how old he was when he got a job, he must have been about 40. But everyone remember what a great man he was. Always helping people. And before he was died he gave me money for scholarship.”
At my community college, typical of the breed especially in urban and suburban settings, about one-third of students in English courses (and nearly all students take English sometime) are labeled developmental. That is, they have not scored high enough on college entrance exams to take regular composition classes that have been the bread and butter of English departments. Now these developmental courses, which exist to help students reach the starting point in regular composition, have elbowed their way into the bread-and-butter category. Without them, some of my colleagues would not have jobs. Community college professors sometimes complain that we are now doing the work that should have been done in the high schools. Maybe so, but we need this work. And the large numbers carry one advantage for the students—most of the stigma that used to be attached to these courses has dissipated. The handicap is just too common.
Readers might be surprised if they got to know these students. They do not represent a particular race or nationality, and the percentage of them who are “ethnic” (as my college puts it) is not appreciably greater than that number in the college as a whole (25 percent in our case, with “ethnic” encompassing everyone not “white,” another difficult term). They go home to their high-rises in the city, to boxy homes in the inner suburbs, to 3,000-square-footers in the outer suburbs, even to farms where the suburbs have yet to reach. They are single parents (in surprising numbers), teenagers still attached to another’s pocketbook, the newly employed and newly independent, immigrants from every corner of the globe, recently downsized older adults in need of retraining, and veterans back from service in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Whatever their backgrounds, their writing problems fit into relatively few categories. Not surprisingly, they have little understanding of grammar (though foreign students certainly tend to excel here and in the understanding of grammatical terms) and see it as a set of arbitrary “rules” concocted by sadistic pedants harboring grudges against the young. The following may serve as typical examples of what instructors encounter daily. Here’s a reference to a short story’s heroine: “She isn’t like most characters, whether its ‘Rags to Riches’, pros weigh more than cons or the character is to innocent for their own good; no.” (This person got a silent nod of approval from me for even trying to use the ultra-mysterious semi-colon.)
Another student wrote, referring to the same character, “They hired her to solve the mystery of whos who, she uses her self at times to bait in situations in order to get the answers she needs. There is multiple advantages in this.” Besides the obvious problems illustrated here, this example typifies another—the tendency of weak students to choose the fancy word, “multiple” where a simple one would do in a misguided effort to be literary. A final example shows the common tendencies to shift tense without reason and to fail to recognize a sentence. “He saw her lurking in his back yard and he comes out, so does his brother. after talking to her they dial the secretarys number to report her.”
Punctuation is an equally baffling and dangerous area. There exists little understanding of it as a set of signals that facilitate the reader’s comprehension. “The author talk’s about the problem’s found in the goverment, he also asks the goverment to do what they say?” When punctuation and grammar are combined, they produce a two-headed monster that makes many feel that every word, every mark on the page, may be the one that sets off the error buzzer. To move forward with a sentence means to court trouble that hides just down the line. If you’ve ever studied a foreign language, you know something of this—you can hardly construct anything of more than basic simplicity without stumbling.
Vocabulary is weak, perhaps stemming from the legions of teachers since elementary school who have feared above all that their students might suffer confusion or dismay. Understanding the rudimentary conventions of research is minimal. Few are aware of what or how to quote from a source, or how and why to credit that source. Knowledge of plagiarism is far from certain, and finally there is the oft-noted paucity of a body of shared knowledge, thereby inhibiting what assumptions a writer can make about a reader. More than ever before, students live in an intellectual world of their own, a personal world where every individual’s baseline is likely to be different from that of most others and coincides with few. Coupled with extremely spotty historical knowledge (Who fought against whom in World War Two or in Vietnam? Any hands up?), the factors outlined here make for a classroom of wide diversity, though not necessarily the “rich” diversity that college catalogues claim for their campuses.
Other causes, less tangible, contribute to students’ poor record and performance in college (especially that 20 percent or so who demand extra time and energy from the professor), and here I venture on more speculative ground. Some are not sure what is done in the classroom—how to behave. They don’t know when or how to take notes. They perennially miss due dates, drift in late, drift out during the break not to return. They sabotage themselves and then seem to expect forgiveness and accommodation from their professors. Someone showing up one day after having been missing for five or six weeks, only vaguely recognized by the professor, will assume that a way can and will be found to bring him up to speed and on track with the rest of the class. Is all this the result of repeatedly being forgiven in the past? I think so.
While there are some, especially older students, who carry around excess anxiety and who sell themselves short academically, the more common affliction is overconfidence: “I expected to do a lot better.” The bump in the road that is the developmental class is seen as an aberration, largely lacking the sobering effect it would have had 30 years ago. No one is going to flunk out of school. Plenty of warning is given if you are in danger of failure. Most developmental courses can be taken on a pass/no pass basis. One’s GPA remains intact in any case, including a withdrawal. A system is in place to cushion failure, and students who have always been praised for just showing up need it. They have been told time and again, “You can be anything you want.” All that is needed is “passion.” So when the academic path contains a detour, explanations to yourself and to others can come easily. Scholastic problems don’t emanate from within but from without. So determined is the college to offer “support” and so long is the list of reasons to receive that support that almost anything can be explained by or blamed on an external cause—poor time management, attention deficit disorder, you name it.
Let me jump to the defense of the other 80 percent of my developmental students. Most of them arrive at class on time, are attentive, work reasonably hard (as hard as or harder than their fellow students in “regular” classes), do their best in and out of class, juggle numerous family and employment-related roles, and display an unaffected earnestness that can be very refreshing. They are, furthermore, appreciative of even modest attention and of the diligence put forth to help them by the vast majority of my patient, serious, and hardworking colleagues. And they show improvement. They can profit significantly from good grammar texts that are short on terms but high on practical application, from some excellent Web sites that provide self-grading exercises, and from a rudimentary grasp of common terms (adjective, pronoun, for example) that can be used for years to come across academic fields.
These students are adults and want to be treated as such. Assigned readings don’t have to be colorful, eye-catching, or full of references that prove their hipness. Most students understand that they’re out of high school, and they don’t appreciate exercises with examples about borrowing the folks’ car. I advocate using books that can be found at any Barnes & Noble, not texts sold in college bookstores. Students see these books as “real books,” not something produced for the classroom, something of a different breed. Readings and discussions can also start to fill a few gaps in knowledge of this country, its geography, its history, and any number of other subjects. For instance, my English-as-Second Language students (one of my sections is exclusively ESL) were fascinated by a ten-minute digression on degrees attained by American college and university students—B.A., M.A., Ph.D. The progression of study, the number of years to attainment, the meaning of the letters—all was unknown to them, though important. Narratives can also be useful, informative, and good models. I’ve used published obituaries, stories that are inspiring without trying to be so. (Don’t get me started on the ones that try to be inspiring.) And, of course, the writing assignments themselves should emphasize not just sentence correctness but the purpose of paragraphs. Students are aware that they exist but not why they exist.
Meantime, a lot of effort is lost to well-meant but dead-end pursuits foisted on students by faculty and administrators who seek to do far more than improve facility with the language. As the college Web site says, the goal is “the development of persons as well as intellects.” Oblivious to signals of topic fatigue, some professors continue to assign readings highlighting racial or gender oppression, closed-minded fundamentalist Christians, wise elders “of color,” and any reading that focuses a spotlight on the warts of U.S. policy, history, or culture. Some professors operate on the mistaken assumption that students will be struck by “Aha!” moments as they are enlightened. So slight do we feel our influence to be that we take undue delight in satisfying our reformer’s instinct. Ah well, students must sigh, what else can be expected from college English professors?
Furthermore, students are asked to spend yet more time (as if they hadn’t spent enough in high school) dwelling on themselves, the ever-fascinating “I,” their own lives, their own “feelings,” their own variations on the endless quest for self-discovery. Foreign students can’t escape this, either. They are forever urged to write about their own countries and their own cultures, as if their readers must do continuous penance for being born and bred insular, an insularity that is a one-way street—only Americans suffer from it. So while we ponder ourselves, we must never forget to “honor” diversity.
You’d think that enough has been written about political correctness on campuses to sink it, but it seems to sail along unperturbed. Documents of all sorts purport to “honor each individual” and “value diversity” (the words can be interchangeable). Web sites boast that the college is “committed to honoring [that word again] human differences,” and vigorously promote “free and open discussion,” while at the same time acknowledging “a special responsibility to be sensitive to the concerns of those who are most vulnerable to discrimination and harassment.” And just about anything can fall under the all-purpose desire to “build awareness of _____.” Fill in the blank as you wish—“Ethiopian culture,” “oppression of bisexuals,” and on. The college further promises to provide students with “educational experiences which assist [them] to understand and celebrate their local, national, international, and multicultural environments.” Whew!
By now students should be reeling if they’re paying attention. Most are not. Maybe they’re too busy, maybe too much of the message is a reprise of high school, or maybe they just don’t see the relevance. At any rate, the great majority make their way through the requirements, write the compositions, read enough of the essays, cooperate with the professor, and move on to “regular” composition where it is usually assumed that they know what a topic sentence is and how to produce one. The cycle of dismay, though, may repeat itself as some new professors remark on what did not get learned in the developmental classes, just as those professors commented on the failures of the high school classes.
I hope these new professors will have patience and forgive their developmental-teaching colleagues. Those men and women are wrestling with classes consisting of students with wildly varied abilities and experience. No diagnostic entrance test can be so accurate (unless it is too time-consuming to grade) as to weed out students who are simply far too weak even for a developmental class or who are, in fact, good enough to be in a regular class. Furthermore, what does one do with the one-third of developmental students who are not native speakers of English and whose problems differ radically from those of their native-speaker classmates? And where does one find the time or the inner resources to confront a problem like the one I recently had. She came up to my table in the middle of class as students were writing. “I missed class the last two weeks,” she said, “because my daughter was in the hospital and [here lowering her voice by half] I was in jail.” I bent my rules, gave her extra time to complete an earlier assignment, wondered if I was being too lenient and what would ultimately be best for her. Compromise is only too common.
In that same class, near the end when only one or two were still around writing diligently, one of my best said, “Can I ask you how to spell a word? I just can’t find it in the dictionary.” When I told him to go ahead, he said, “Taught.” I gave him the answer and told him how to find verb forms in the dictionary. But did he know what I meant by verb forms? How much should I explain? How much is enough but not too much?
How much will these sorts of handicaps influence these students’ lives? How much will it matter if this bright person misspells “thought,” for example, or “driven” on a memo at work? Would the ramifications, if there are indeed any, be more substantial than just embarrassment? Probably not, but it’s the job of colleges to afford any student they admit the opportunity to minimize the possible damage. And they are admitting plenty. News reports these days tell us that never before have so many Americans been enrolled in college and that most of the recent increases are due to a surge in the community college population, now at about 3.5 million. Perhaps nearly two million of them will spend some time in a developmental classroom, either English or math. Virtually all of their professors, if my colleagues are typical, will work hard to provide them with what they might need. I think it’s worth the effort when I remind myself that each face out there in the classroom represents a set of hopes and plans, most of which could be of value to others, and that misuse of the language is one stumbling block that most can overcome.
Jack Miller teaches English at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota. His previous American Experiment essay was “Appreciating Community Colleges: ‘In Many Ways, the Best Education.’”
Blah
I’m at the bookstore next to Kroger, where Maria is doing our grocery shopping, and I can’t think of a damned thing to write about.
Mostly, I just want to go home and take a nap after our late breakfast at Cracker Barrel.
Oh, yeah. I just noticed something to comment on.
About every fourth person I’ve seen today is wearing a North Face jacket. I never saw such a profusion of North Face clothing before I moved to northeast Arkansas. The only North Face dealer in the area is Gearheads, an outdoor recreation place that specializes mainly in bicycles and skateboards.
It’s like they just discovered the brand and made it trendy. I was into North Face stuff 37 years ago when I was in my backpacking period. I still have a North Face down-filled sleeping bag that desperately needs cleaning.
Stein of the Day
Rumple Minze is a 100 proof (50 percent alcohol) peppermint schnapps. It’s a liqueur and it’s made by the Scharlachberg Distillery in Germany. It’s best served straight up and chilled. When I have Rumple Minze on hand, I keep the bottle in the freezer. A shot of this stuff will take your breath away.
Friday, February 05, 2010
My favorite TV show when I was 7
The announcer was Jack Narz who went on to be a game show host on Concentration, Beat the Clock, Now You See It and Dotto. What most people don’t know is that Narz was a fighter pilot in the China-Burma-India theatre of World War II and won the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Keep that in mind when you watch him pimping for the Space Patrol Cosmic Smoke Gun while wearing that uniform that makes him look like a car hop at a ‘50s drive-in restaurant. Narz died in 2008 at the age of 85.
Ed Kemmer,who played Buzz Corry, was also a WWII fighter pilot who was shot down and spent the rest of the war as a POW. He was 83 when he died in 2004.
Living in the future
Sitting here listening to Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” with my iPod earbuds, I’m reminded of the first time I experienced stereophonic music on headphones and what an amazing revelation it was.
There was a record store on the north side of Main Street in Lafayette, Ind., back in the late 1950s that had a couple of headphone-equipped record turntables where customers could audition records to decide whether they wanted to buy them.
They had big, comfortable David Clark headphones, back when David Clark was a player in the audiophile market. (Their focus has since shifted to headsets for aviation and other noisy environments and speakerless ear protection.)
The cushy foam pads effectively silenced the ambient noise of the store and the street outside, making for pure experience of the music. I don’t remember what my inaugural headphone LP was – possibly Bernie Green’s “Futura,” but probably something a little earlier.
But I do remember how blown away I was to hear music with such astonishing clarity and depth.
My neighbors, the Joneses (that really was their name) bought an RCA stereo phonograph around 1958 and I’d sat between the speakers and experienced the channel separation in their living room. It was impressive, but nothing like what those David Clark headphones did to my head.
Small surprise that Sony and Apple have made millions with the various iterations of the Walkman and the iPod. Now anyone can have that experience anywhere they like.
So what if the future didn’t give us Jetsons stuff like robot slaves and personal flying cars. This is still pretty damned cool.
I hate those meeses to pieces
This little guy, a permanent look of surprise on his pointy face, couldn’t resist the peanut butter on the trap atop the plastic tub holding 30 pounds of sunflower seeds for our bird feeder.
(The headline, by the way, is a quote from the 1958 Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon series called “Pixie and Dixie.” P and D were mice and their nemesis was a cat named Mr. Jinx who uttered those memorable words at least once in every episode. You can read all about it here. )
I dumped the dead mouse into the trash can for interment in a sanitary landfill sometime next week. There will be no visitation or services.
I’m starting to run out of steins for my Stein of the Day feature and have been wistfully scanning Ebay for additions to the collection. Nothing new yet.
No GOP ideas? Here are 10
From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
By Bruce Kesler
President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats swung their 2008 majority stick, poked the health care hornets nest and are being chased by a popular uprising saying “no to Washington.” Obama now says he is willing to listen to Republican proposals for improving health care. Republicans believe that just passing an ObamaCare-lite will still move us toward government control, toward larger deficits and higher taxes.
Instead, improvements should be separate and incremental to improve health care without financial excesses or intrusion into personal lives. Here are 10 proposals that would work, cumulatively helping the poor and middle class, be affordable, enlarge care without taking away deserved care, and be supported across party lines.
• Allow tax deductions or refundable tax credits for premiums, so more people would be encouraged to obtain insurance. The poor and middle-class uninsured would be on equal terms to those receiving employer-paid benefits.
• Allow individuals to use savings of pretax income, allowed to accumulate, for health care expenses. Include professional long-term care and over-the-counter medications if prescribed by a doctor or dentist. The middle class would benefit. This also allows more people to choose lower-premium, higher-deductible policies.
• Retain Medicare Advantage programs, whose higher benefits and lower co-pays than straight Medicare are more widely used by the poor. But limit those higher benefits and lower co-pays to core medical, dental and vision care.
This allows some reduction in government subsidies. Medicare Advantage plans use networks with negotiated rates and usage monitoring, which reduces their costs.
• Require full portability of individual medical insurance to other carriers at the same or lower actuarial level of benefits, reducing loss of coverage when moving to another area and increasing competitive measuring across carriers that reduces confusion. Rather than motivating people to wait until after they’re sick or injured, driving up the premiums of others, individuals would have more incentive to at least lock in more affordable catastrophic benefits.
• Allow insurers to offer plans nationally, with fewer mandates, to increase choices of benefit levels and premiums. Premiums in each part of the country would reflect local costs, which would increase knowledge of local variations in costs and competitive pressures to reduce higher outliers.
• Allow immigrants, legal or illegal, to enroll in private or government plans but require full payment of premiums. This would reduce uninsurance among those who are able to afford premiums. Legal immigrants could not be naturalized unless providing proof of basic comprehensive medical insurance from the date of entry into the country.
• To apply for government assistance, means-test income and all financial assets of uninsured citizens and legal immigrants. If premiums plus out-of-pocket expenses during the year exceed 10 percent of means, provide a refundable tax credit. For those still uninsured, require providers’ charges to be capped at 20 percent above the same rates as the provider’s highest rates negotiated with their largest private insurer. Currently, “list” prices charged those uninsured may be 30-100 percent higher than negotiated with insurers, with no cap. This would reduce provider charges due to competition, protect the poor and provide incentive to obtain coverage, at least cheaper catastrophic coverage. Those otherwise qualified uninsured would be required to enroll in the appropriate government program.
• Require tort medical cases to be heard by specialized expert courts to reduce the sway of emotions for outsize judgments. Tort attorney commissions on settlements would be higher for pretrial negotiated settlements than for trial judgments, encouraging more reasonable and less costly results for those who deserve recompense.
• State Medicaid or SCHIP programs offering benefits above the federal level of benefits or enrollee income would be ineligible for any federal subsidies. Higher “welfare” states would not be able to pass their largesse on to taxpayers elsewhere and would have to justify them to their own voters.
• Private or government retiree health programs should be required to become fully actuarially funded within five years. If not, private plans would lose tax benefits. Private and governmental plans could reduce benefits, including at the next negotiation of union plans.
The Democrats’ vision of the perfect is the enemy of the good. There is little public support for the Democrats’ overexpansive, excessively costly intrusion into our very lives. There is widespread support for the above reasonable improvements.
Kesler, a resident of Encinitas, is a former corporate finance and business operations executive. For the past 20 years, he has been an independent health care and benefits consultant.
Stein of the Day
This half-liter stein sports the BMW roundel.
There are a couple of explanations for the roundel design. The most plausible is that it references the blue-and-white checker design seen on the coat of arms of the German state of Bavaria (see yesterday’s Stein of the Day).
The other is a widely held belief that the blue and white element stems from BMW’s original business of building aircraft engines. It approximates what the pilot of an open cockpit World War I biplane would have seen looking through the arc of the two-bladed propeller.
I’ve accumulated three of these steins.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Good day, so far
The weather is crappy – sleet turning into rain and temperatures in the mid-30s – but I’m a happy man this morning.
We got the rent check from our Thorntown tenant, our taxes are done with refunds pending for federal and state, my used book sales are doing well, I’m looking forward to lunch at Olive Garden and it’s only three days until the Who play at Super Bowl halftime.
It takes so little to make me happy.
Stein of the Day
I’ve never used it because it would take so long to drink two liters of beer that it would be warm before I got halfway through it. Two liters is the equivalent of a whole six-pack. This is clearly a stein for a serious beer drinker.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Free puppies!
I'm at Books-a-Million and a guy came in asking if he could put up his free puppies flyer. The mother was an Aussie and the dad was a terrier. I took one of the flyers and promised to put it in a prominent place.
I think this could be considered a prominent place.
The pups are in Jonesboro, Ark. The phone number is 870-273-3063 and the email is upperman@suddenlink.net.
McBreakfast
It’s a sunny 37 degrees, going up to 40 or higher and I’m having a parfait and coffee breakfast at McDonald’s.
There’s still plenty of snow on the ground, but the roads in our subdivision were clear enough for my del Sol and the main thoroughfares are completely clear and dry.
I have a few things on my to-do list today including a trip to the Senior Services Center this afternoon to check out the computer projector and make sure everything is ready for the first session of my digital photography class tomorrow afternoon.
I was mildly concerned to learn that what may be the first public notice about the class went into this morning’s newspaper. If the Senior Services Center newsletter hasn’t gotten some folks interested in the class, the short notice in the paper probably won’t do much good.
Judging from this morning’s photo, I think I need a haircut and a beard trim.
FIVE HOURS LATER: OK, I got a haircut and a beard trim at Sports Clips.
Also, we decided to push the advanced digital photo class back to six Mondays from March 22 to April 26. This gives us more time to promote it and also make it possible for those who complete the beginning class, that starts tomorrow, to feed into the advanced class.
Stein of the Day
This lidded half-liter stein celebrates the Schnitzelbank Song.
It’s a somewhat complicated song that, like many other things, gets harder the drunker you get.
Here’s what blog.topgermansites.com has to say about it:
If you look up the definition of a “Schnitzelbank” you will see it described as a wordworking tool used in Germany in the olden days. Translated it means “carving bench”.
The Schnitzelbank is also the name of a popular song that was originally written by Germans in the late 1800’s. It was originally designed to teach children German, but today is commonly used as a drinking song at bars and parties. It is also considered the International Friendship Song.
The song itself is made up of 16 different items that are sung about. These items can be anything you want and usually rhyme. The most common items and most traditionally sung are kurz und lang, hun und her, kreuz und quer, scheiss gewehr, wagen rad, krumm und grad, grosses glas, ochsen blas, haufen mist, schnickel fritz, dicke frau, fette sau, langer mann, tannenbaum, hochzeits ring and gefarliches ding.
Schnitzelbank posters are available with pictures of these items to help you sing along. They are also a fun thing to have hanging on your wall in your party room.
Here are the lyrics to the traditional version of the song:
Ist das nicht eine Schnitzelbank?
Ja, das ist eine Schnitzelbank.kurz und lang
hin und her
kreuz und quer
Schiessgewehr
Wagenrad
krumm und grad
grosses Glass
Ochsenblas
Haufen Mist
Schnickelfritz
dicke Frau
fette Sau
langer Mann
Tannenbaum
Hochzeitsring
gefaehrliches DingO - Die Schoenheit an der Wand - Ja das ist eine Schnitzelbank.
Ist das nicht mit einem freundlichen Gruess?
Ja das ist mit einem freundlichen Gruess,
Ist das nicht interessante News? (noos)
Ja das ist interessante News…..freundlicher Gruess, interessante News, gefaehrliches Ding, Hochzeitsring…
Oh - die Schoenheit an der Wand, ja das ist eine Schnitzelbank.
And here is how it is supposed to sound. In this case it’s dubbed over a video from Rammstein. Let’s all sing along…
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
I hate this commercial
I can’t explain it, but I have a really strong, visceral negative reaction to this guy and the whole premise of the commercial.
Don’t freak out – put it into Neutral
What to do if your accelerator sticks. You have two choices:
- Panic and become a screaming projectile
- Keep a cool head and put the car into neutral
Now, how hard is that?
For God’s sake, someone adopt Chewy!
This is Chewy, a puppy up for adoption at the Jonesboro Animal Control Shelter. He’s listed online here as a border collie-German shepherd mix, but he sure looks like an Australian shepherd to me. He’s a dead ringer for Pete when he was that age.
I don’t dare go look at him, because I don’t think I could resist bringing him home. But if push comes to shove and nobody adopts him and the shelter management considers putting him down, we’ll rescue the little guy and add him to our pack.
Taxes done
I filed our state and federal income tax returns this morning and am hugely relieved to have that task out of the way.
I used H&R Block At Home, formerly known as TaxCut, and e-filed both returns.
Now that I know we have refunds coming, it’s got me jonesing for a new 64GB iPod Touch. My 60GB classic iPod will be five years old this summer and the battery just doesn’t hold a charge like it once 
There’s still too much snow on our subdivision roads for my del Sol, so I came in to town this morning with Maria, dropped her off at work and am now comfortably ensconced at Hastings with a steaming cup of Rio Azul Guatemalan coffee.
It’s 36 degrees at 10:30 a.m., heading for a high of 45, so I expect to be fully mobile by this time tomorrow.
Stein of the Day
At the close of the war, Germany was divided into four zones of Allied occupation – U.S., British, French, and Soviet. The Western Allies restored German sovereignty to their occupational zones as quickly as was practical.
However, the U.S.S.R. installed a puppet communist regime that continued to rule the Soviet zone of occupation as the German
Reunification came after the collapse of communism throughout eastern Europe in the late 1980s.
The stein features the flags and emblems of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the GDR on its sides.
This stein is # 1,457 of a limited edition of 19,900 steins.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Melting, melting…
The melting continues. The temperature at 2 p.m. is 33 and U.S. 49 is almost completely clear of ice and snow, noticeably more clear than when I made my earlier post office run about noon.
So I’ll just stay put and work on our taxes, since I finally have all of the documents I need to fire up the tax software and put this annual chore behind me. I’ve used H&R Block’s TaxCut for a decade or so. This year, they’re renamed it H&R Block At Home. Whatever. It looks the same to me.
Stein of the Day
This half-liter lidded stein is from the Olympia Brewery in Tumwater, Wash.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:
Leopold Schmidt, a German immigrant from Montana founded The Capital Brewing Company at Tumwater Falls on the Deschutes River in the town of Tumwater, near the south end of Puget Sound. He built a four-story wooden brewhouse, a five-story cellar building, a one-story ice factory powered by the lower falls, and a bottling and keg plant and in 1896, began brewing and selling Olympia Beer. In 1902, the firm became Olympia Brewing Company and chose the slogan "It's the Water" to promote its flagship product. Statewide Prohibition, which began in January 1916, four years before National Prohibition, ended beer making operations. After Prohibition ended, a new Olympia Brewery was erected just upstream from the original, and Olympia beer went back on sale in 1934.[1]
Olympia Beer was a very popular regional brand in the Pacific Northwest for half of a century. It eventually expanded nationwide, repositioned as a low-price lager. During the 1970s, Olympia acquired Hamm's and Lone Star. Olympia Brewing also produced Buckhorn Beer,[2] which had previously been a product of the Lone Star Brewing Company.[3] The Schmidt family, which owned and operated the brewery and company, elected to sell the company in 1982. Olympia was subsequently purchased by Pabst in 1983.
As with many other regional breweries, ownership of this brewery eventually passed through several corporations including Pabst, G. Heileman, and Stroh's, until the brewery was eventually purchased by SABMiller. For a time, the Olympia brewery took over the brewing of other Pacific Northwest brands as their original breweries were closed one by one, including the Lucky Lager brewery in Vancouver, Washington, the Henry Weinhard's brewery in Portland, Oregon, and the Rainier Beer brewery in Seattle, Washington. Miller closed the Olympia brewery on July 1, 2003 citing the unprofitability of such a small brewery. However, beer marketed under the Olympia Beer name continues to be manufactured by SABMiller at a plant in Irwindale, California.
And:
Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock drinks an Olympia beer in The Graduate (1967). Paul Newman drinks an Oly in the movie, Sometimes a Great Notion (1970). A neon sign advertising Olympia beer can be seen in the window of the liquor store in American Graffiti (1973). Clint Eastwood promoted the brand in several popular films, including Magnum Force (1973), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Eiger Sanction (1975), Every Which Way but Loose (1978) (in which his orangutan Clyde also indulges), and Any Which Way You Can (1980). John Denver drinks an Olympia in "Oh, God!" (1977). Signage and cans being consumed are also easily visible in The China Syndrome (1979). The brand was also featured in the movie Friday the 13th Part III (1982). Josh Brolin's George W. Bush drinks Olympia beer in W. (2008).
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