Blasphemy

To think that you could get away with not only having drive-up coffee houses (Victor Allen’s has had a drive-up for years), but that you would also structure them in such a way as to have one of those “advance request” stations where you shout in your order, to be picked up at the window further down – why, that defies and defaces everything that I love about coffee houses. Starbucks, how could you!*

* I will now admit that this afternoon, I not only did the drive-through for a second day in a row, but I was also very tempted to honk my horn punitively at the car in front who forgot to pre-place the order, thereby resulting in about a 90 second delay for me, as they had to do it at the pick-up window.

English is not my first language…

…but I thought I had certain words firmly under my belt (am I using the phrase correctly?).

For example, when someone says “inauguration” I think of that person stepping into an office, position, or association. Merriam-Webster confirms this:
inauguration: a ceremonial induction into office.

Is Bush switching jobs?

I interrupt Ocean’s typically bland and dispassionate posting to bring you this important announcement: my littlest one turns twenty today

You’re too far away today and way too old!
Here, these (lucky) four are yours, with names that are wishes for you:

...carefree wonder

...garnets and gold

...la vie en rose

...double play

…and so much more.
The truth is, I love you more than roses.

Happy birthday, little one.

Notes from a Spring Semester day

1. Out goes vanity, in comes perky little beret.

Did somebody say warming trend?

Tomorrow: out of the closet, onto the head. 

2. Is there someone sitting on the floor? It does look crowded in here…

Discussing optimal class size once, my fellow bloggers agreed that forty is about perfect to teach: large enough for the class to feel crowded and full, small enough to learn names and develop conversations. Family Law tends to hover around that number. Even when it goes up to 45, if you assume that there will be five rotating between flu and “didn’t feel like going to class today,” you still have the happy forty there to work with.

For a reason I cannot explain (is it the fact that family issues were so much at the core of political discourse this election season?), my Family Law class has over 60 students this semester. Unless there is a three-month long flu epidemic, I can expect 60 faces every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Sadly, this means that there will be at least fifteen whom I will not really hear from much, nor will I recognize them several years down the road as they begin to practice law. Oh, I’ll remember the names – I can tell if a student has never sat in a class of mine. But the faces will be harder to spot.

As I paced the room, I thought about this and I hoped more than the usual handful would stick around this semester after class, to chat and ask those secondary questions. I think I look forward to this contact even more than they do.

3. Conversation at Victor’s with a young barista who has a tattered little cup for tips with the sign “counter intelligence” pasted on it:

So do you think it’s inappropriate today to be wearing shorts? (I let my wool coat hang loosely around my shorts and t-shirt...)
Oh! I didn’t notice! Uh… is there a reason? (He looks furtively around, worried, possibly thinking that he is dealing with an extremely dangerous and armed lunatic; you can see him doing the mental calculation: dare I grab the phone and call the police?)
People have been looking oddly at me, I do not know why…
Uh… I don’t know… It’s cold outside? (I swear he’s moving sideways toward the phone… Time to make a hasty retreat…)
Well, so long, thanks for making the laté extra hot!
Yeah, you’re welcome, sure, yeah, okay…

What, I am supposed to put on my teaching clothes after the gym just to go home?

Welcome to Spring Semester

If it's Tuesday, it must be the bloggers' special: class at 9:30. Is it an innate preference? (Other bloggers teaching at this time? Read A and F; B is at 9:55, clearly preferring her beauty rest.) [For a rousing discussion of innate preferences, read this.]

A winter morning class means you wake up to a sunrise, as seen through color-tinted icicles 

What’s better, the book or the reviews? – part 2

I love Adam Gopnik. I admit it. I mean, I never met Adam Gopnik and I haven’t read a fraction of what he has written (oh, but I read Paris to the Moon, isn’t that enough?), but the things that have come my way have been wonderful. Please do not tell me that he is some kind of a megalomaniac or worse, a despicable human being who has some nasty habit or other, because that would burst my bubble.

When Gopnik writes, I listen. When his articles appear in the New Yorker, I read them BEFORE I get to the cartoons. If he would come on a book tour to Madison I would be one of those fawning idiots that arrives two hours early just to get a seat. [Of course, in reality he would never come to Madison; he is probably one of those east coast snots that believes Madison to be in Alabama, or at the very least Arkansas. No way would his precious New York – Paris foot step in the “dairy state.” I’m guessing now, I know nothing on this at all, just speculating..]

Okay, so why all this Gopnik adoration now? His article in this week’s New Yorker reviewed two recent books on the life of Leonardo da Vinci. It was a wonderful review (of course; I’m biased, I already admitted it). So much so that the magnetic forces, way beyond my control, drew me to Borders late, late this evening, and I picked out the text on da Vinci that sounded absolutely sublime (the one by Nicholl). I stood waiting for the cashier, thumbing through the beautiful pages, pleased and happy… Until I cracked open the other book that I was holding ( Hornby’s “The Polysyllabic Spree”). Hornby is funny. Hornby can often be downright hilarious. In this particular little volume, Hornby wrote about all the books that he had bought and never read. Camic took Hornby to heart.

I thought of a new rule: if it is likely that within the next week I will not read more than at least 100 pages, I will not buy it. I left Borders richer in cash, poorer in spirit.

Blast these reviews! They are worse than commercials for Miss Debby cupcakes.

How many ways can I tell myself, “you deserve this?”

Here it is in Polish: Nalezy ci sie!

If you’re wondering about the paucity of posts today, well let me be frank: I have been in my office putting the finishing touches on a syllabus and a lecture. Tomorrow is, of course, the beginning of the Spring Semester (sounds so refreshingly warm and balmy – Spring Semester!) and here I am, working late in anticipation of the eternal sunshine that comes with each new beginning before the mind gets spotted with the little things that always go wrong (one hopes in small ways only).

I am filled with energy. I huffed and puffed for over an hour at the gym, then I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. True, that last part (the “getting to work”) did not happen until early afternoon, what with plumbing to repair at home (yes! Hire me! I can fix toilets and drains!) and endless email (of a pleasant kind – I am hatching my escapes for the months ahead), but all is done now, the syllabus is typed and duplicated and I can soon go home.

What’s better, the book or the reviews?

“Blink,” the book I fleetingly mentioned in a post yesterday, is becoming the talk of the week. I myself have not read it and truthfully, I lost interest in it quickly after listening to the interview with Gladwell earlier last week (I know, that is so totally not fair, but there you have it – every time I would have picked up the book I would have had to recall his lackluster responses and the content would slide into the background, overshadowed by the images of a noodle-like persona*).

But I have enjoyed enormously the critical reviews of "Blink," the latest at TNR, by Judge Posner (thanks Althouse), and also a brief comment at JFW (added to yesterday's "thin-slicing " of it by Brooks in the Times and last week's "letter" in Slate found here).

I love controversy about authors (a mean streak is hereby acknowledged?) and after a while, I forget that I myself have no opinion (having not read the book under fire) – I get so wildly caught up in the argument. Sometimes I get so engaged in the back-and-forth that I am ready to sit down and write my own review – all on the basis of the observations of others.

One more critical piece on “Blink” and I think I can begin my own sharp retort. I have the outline in my head already.

* An image that was not with me when I read Galdwell's The Tipping Point some years back -- a book not unlike this one: a half dozen social sciences with a peppering of the natural sciences, all in one short, but fun romp.

Golden memories

So instead of doing something useful and productive tonight, I watched the Golden Globes. I am a sucker for movie awards even if I don’t really follow Hollywood stuff. It’s such a circus!

Highlight for me? Well, you could say Mick Jagger’s award. I had once posted here (don't ask me to find it, it was long ago and I am tired) that I had seen him on stage live, in Poland in 1969 and I had thrown out an invitation (scribbled on a piece of paper and tossed onto the stage) for, um, a private conversation. He never picked up on it, but I feel we have a special history.

Plus, in 1965, I made my first radio appearance – I dialed WABC radio (in NY) and my call was (randomly) the lucky one: I was asked on the air to dedicate a hit song to someone. I said in my high pitched 12-year old voice: "I dedicate “19th Nervous Breakdown” to my best friend, Radhika C.” Radhika is my link to Sri Lanka now. I blogged about her here.

The iPod Shuffle has simply figured out that unexpected pleasure is at times far more gratifying than planned satisfaction

Much attention has been given to the new iPod Shuffle: for only $99, 120 songs, played in a random way. What’s so great about that?? Ohhhh, that’s the iPod I would like to have!

I remember the days (many decades ago) when they would play my favorite song on the radio and I would be insanely happy… even though I had the 45 rpm at home and could play it anytime. So spontaneously there, springing a surprise. Or, when, on an impulse, someone calls and spins a brilliant plan to eat, to do something, to take a trip around the world. Because they just thought of it and it seemed in that second right. And chances are it was.

The NYT pairing of the story (today, Week in Review) on the iPod and the book "Blink," where the author argues that “our instant decisions can be better than those born of long contemplation,” was clever indeed. True, I could too easily be accused of being a rather impulsive type, but this isn’t a post that seeks to justify past spontaneity on my part. I only want to put in a good word for impulse and randomness and blink decisions and wave a flag of hope that knocks down the last sentence of the Times piece where Bennahum (writer for Wired and Slate) is touted as having said this:

“…your rational process of making sense of things is a model that may be obsolete…’Life is random’ is a really great way of shrugging your shoulders in a Buddhist way of nonattachment.” “It’s kind of grim actually,” Mr. Bennahum added.

No it’s not. Realizing that joy can be born of randomness as well, is hardly a crushing discovery.

Surely there’s something between Sex and the City and Gravity’s Rainbow to feed our souls?

In today’s NYTimes Week in Review, I read with great interest about the expectations that are foisted upon the US by different regions and governments around the globe. Of course, what Europe appears to want is hardly what the US is willing to hand over. But I am fascinated by the comment of Michael Naumann, editor of the German Die Zeit. The NYT says this about him:

For Mr. Naumann, who once worked as a book publisher in New York, America’s most lasting contribution would be to reclaim its status as a wellspring of the arts.Too many Europeans, he said, view American culture as synonymous with raunchy television like the “Sex and the City” series. “What I wish most from the United States is the next novel from Tom Pynchon,” he said.

He has got to be kidding! How many readers were actually able to finish (let alone fully comprehend) “Gravity’s Rainbow?” Maybe it reads better when translated into a language* that doesn’t acknowledge the need for shorter words or sentences.

*In selecting the “words of the year,” the German Language Society also gave a nod to Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgaben- übertragungsgesetz – winner of a special award as the longest German word of the year. I'm told that “the monster word consisted of 63 letters, 20 syllables, and ten individual words—all to express a law having to do with British beef (Rindfleisch) and the so-called mad cow disease" (read about it here).

You celebrate getting through another year at birthday-time, even though you sleep during a good portion of that year, correct?

…So why shouldn’t a blog celebrate an anniversary (today!) even if it occasionally dozes off?

Congrats to the Tonya Show (TTS) for a magnificent year in the running (with an occasional rest stop)! I remember well the birth of TTS: I was at the author's house a few weeks into January 04 and I was telling her about the first few steps taken by Ocean. Her reaction? Something to the tune of “you blog? how weird!” Within a day, her own blog was born.

…What if you change your name in the middle of the year? Can you still lay claim to kudos for a year of the Tonya Show even though at birth, you were Procrastination Central?

Yes, of course. If, say, the Today Show (another TTS) starts out as Sixty Minutes and then changes its name and hour of appearance, why, it still deserves an anniversary, doesn’t it? DOESN’T IT? I’m going with a “YES!” Cheers to the Tonya Show (also once known as Procrastination Central) – with deep appreciation for the blog, the author, and the indelible sense of humor that radiates from both!