If I were being responsible right now, I would be just finishing an essay analyzing Brodsky’s cultural influences in Russian (as it is I’m 70% done with the essay and 100% done trying to connect my “ы”s to my “т”s while maintaining the proper stem), or reviewing my infinitives for my return to Hebrew tomorrow. […]
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For the Lord will again delight in your well-being, as He did in that of your fathers, since you will be heeding the Lord your God and keeping his commandments and laws that are recorded in this book of the Teaching—once you return to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.
Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it. (Deuteronomy, 9-14)
“I believe trees have souls and they all identify as women.” Glenn Beck (heard as an ad for his daily radio show on Fox) Read More View Post
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I don’t think I’m especially good at partnerships, except in my marriage (I think). I’m too stubborn, am not always prepared to compromise, and have a short attention span. So I rarely partner with a person, because I generally fear the worst—damaging or losing a friendship.
This opportunity was no exception.
I hated studying history. In my high school years, history was pure drudgery. I still remember my teacher: a little man, balding, with black framed glasses. The problem wasn’t the difficulty of his classes; it was his approach to history. Every few days we were assigned a section to read in the history book and we were to answer the list of five to eight questions at the end of the chapter. Yawn. We were expected to know events and dates; we didn’t need to know much more than that.
So when it was time to go to Cal. State Long Beach (it wasn’t Cal. State University yet), I was excited to know that we’d have plenty of choices about the classes we could take. Then I learned about the basic requirements. Which included Western Civilization. Not again, I thought. But I figured I’d get through the pain of boredom early so I took the class in my first semester. Little did I know that it would change my life.
My older cousin Rosetta was off to college when I was still in knickers. My aunt said she was brilliant, finishing high school and college early. She went on to teach school in New Jersey for thirty years. I only saw her on holidays and a few vacations at her dad’s cottage in Butler, PA.
We recently began to talk by phone after all these years. She still has the same musical voice. Even on a serious topic, she sounds melodic. Her voice is clear and concise, no stutters, sputters or slang, and it’s also a link to the familiar. When I hear it, our deceased relatives pop up in my mind, laughing around a feast of turkey, stuffed cabbage and homemade pumpkin pie, or the sound of cards being shuffled, knocking on the table and the scent of cherry pipe tobacco.
Flipping through the channels recently, I stumbled onto our local Tallahassee Public Station, featuring the Fiftieth Anniversary of Mr. Rogers Special. Mr. Rogers started out in my hometown of Pittsburgh on WQED. The special is narrated by then stagehand, actor Michael Keaton, who was also a character in the musical skits (think low budget). Michael […]
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My arrival in early 1974 was inauspicious . I have photographic evidence of this humble beginning. I see a pink-faced sleeping newborn swaddled in a hospital blanket, assigned with a small placard designating me as “13.” The Thai nurses attached no significance to that number. They were focused on some lack of reflex in the five pound, four ounce infant, and were trying to bottle feed […]
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From the penultimate paragraphs of C.S. Lewis’s essay “High and Low Brows”: Until quite modern times the reading of imaginative literature in a man’s own tongue was not regarded as meritorious. The great authors of the past wrote to entertain the leisure of their adult contemporaries, and a man who cared for literature needed no […]
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As my nickname on this site suggests, I am a kid who happens to really enjoy programming. I learned to code at the age of either 9 or 10, in a relatively low-level (close to the computer) language called “C”. That language is the underpinning of practically every device with a computer you own. When […]
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A few months back, Von Snrub asked us “What Are You Currently Learning?” My projects for the summer were to add a crochet edging to a corporal (a type of altar cloth) and to refinish a bedroom set found on Craigslist. The Corporal: Read More View Post
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Being in education, I constantly hear the term “life-long learners.” I don’t exactly know what bureaucrats mean by that, since they appear to only get credits to become more powerful through credentialization. In fact, when you know something outside the scope of your degree or job description, they tend to act confused and even skeptical. “How could you know that? you didn’t go to school for that!”
However, I’m a big advocate of “You can always learn new things,, and that you should when time, hopefully, permits. Last year, I taught myself C++ with the help of a few books and YouTube. Currently, I’m teaching myself Unity, the development software, which requires a healthy dose of C#. Very fun, but very challenging.
