PARVUM OPUS

 

Number 231

June 21, 2007

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THE LITTLE PROFESSOR          

 

Bill sent a valuable link to The Little Professor: English Professors vs. Cats, from which I gleaned these two nuggets: (1) Cute Overload! Site of too-cute pix of kitties and other cuteness unleashed! Very cheering. (2) ENGLISH PROFESSORS: Standard conversation: "Under the reign of transnationalist capitalism, the normative discursive structures of the English classroom have been subsumed by neo-Fordian practices." Luckily I went to school pre-deconstructionist/postmodernist fads. They say it's fading but lots of those decon guys have tenure. (Read Frederick Crews.)

 

SIR SATAN

 

Elsewhere, the literary game isn't what it used to be. Britain passed a resolution to knight Salman Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses led to a fatwa calling for his death. A Pakistan minister said the knighting justifies suicide bombing. Watch out, England! And everywhere else.

 

GEEK CHORUS

 

My alma mater, The University of Akron, has lost at least one verse from its alma mater. I distinctly remember a few lines that I cannot find on the web anywhere, not even on the school web site. The official alma mater is now just the first verse and chorus:

 

Close beside Cuyahoga’s waters,

Stream of amber hue,

O’er old Buchtel, Summit’s* glory,

Waves the gold and blue.

 

Hail we Akron! Sound her praises,

Speed them on the gale,

Ever stand our Alma Mater,

Akron hail, all hail!

 

I don't remember if the Cuyahoga River is of amber hue, but it is the one that caught on fire before they cleaned it up. (Check out Randy Newman's tribute song, Burn On, Big River.)

 

But here's the verse that has mysteriously disappeared:

 

Greeks may sing of Mount Olympus

Jats of Punjab lore

But of Buchtel, Summit's glory,

Sing we evermore.

 

As a student I thought it was kind of goofy. However, now I love it and want it to be preserved, I want to know who wrote it, it's part of my Akron U. memory. I wrote to the Alumni Office about it but they haven't answered. Did someone else think it was goofy, or did they think that any mention of Greeks and Jats would be somehow offensive? I'd like to find the rest of the lyrics. Meanwhile, I have preserved these glorious four lines on a CafePress T-shirt.

 

*The college that developed into the big state university ~ now the world's top polymer chemistry school ~ was Buchtel College, which is in Summit County.

 

GERUND POSSESSIVE

 

Regarding the possessive used with a gerund: I ran across a sentence that confused me a bit:

 

I can remember my sister and me sleeping on the floor of my parents' bedroom when we finally got a window unit.

 

Obviously, this could not be "my sister and my sleeping", although I think "sleeping" is a gerund and the object of "remember". But maybe it's not. The object must be "my sister and me" and "sleeping" is an appositive modifier.

 

GENTLEMEN WILL BEHAVE

 

Sign in our fave sandwich shop: "Gentlemen will behave. Others must." I don't know what to call this rhetorical device. I guess it's not a zeugma ("Mr. Pickwick took his hat and his leave.") Dict.org says zeugma is the use of a word to govern two or more words though appropriate to only one. Not a good definition. "Took" is appropriate to both hat and leave, but it's two different kinds of taking. In the sandwich shop sign, the joke is the switch in our understanding of "will". First it looks like a command, but then we see that here it's a simple declarative, by analogy to the second sentence, which is a command.

 

BLURB

 

Dave DaBee wrote about another online self-publishing company, Blurb, which has free downloadable software for putting together a book. I downloaded it but haven't looked at it or tried it yet, but it could be a real boon. Thanks and a tip of the PO hat to DaBee.

 

THE BIG BLOGS

 

Slept through Western Civ and Middle Eastern Civ? Get blogged down this summer.

 

Robert Spencer is blogging the Koran weekly now. The first sura is at HotAir.com, then he launches into a discussion, then you have to go down on the page to find links to the actual text (just before the Blowback section).

 

David Plotz is blogging the Bible, but apparently just the Old Testament. He adds his commentary at Slate.com, but the actual texts don't seem to be linked. You're better off reading and thinking up your own comments. I don't think Plotz is as knowledgeable about the Bible as Spencer is about the Koran.

 

The One Year Bible Blog from someone named Mike quotes Proverbs 4:7: "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" and has great pictures, plus links to the text.

 

JUST SILLY

 

Found art: a news headline sequence (two different stories):

 

More than 700 nude bicyclists pedaled from Hyde Park to Wellington Arch the other day to protest global warming and excessive emissions from automobiles. Their message was better "nude power" than "nuke power."

Cracks show in Democratic House.

 

FLAGGED

 

Last week's squib about Flag Day, illegal immigration, and so on, provoked one reader to think that readers might interpret it (me) as racist, starting with the semi-humorous suggestion that Jews or émigré Israelis settle in northern Mexico, to help solve Mexico's economic problems. He thought I was sterotyping Jews as money-makers, an old-fashioned kind of stereotyping. My racism is more modern. I identify Israelis with making the desert bloom, technological progress, education, and a civilized and democratic system that allows Arabs to live among them (as compared with other Middle Eastern countries where Jews and also Christians are severely oppressed). If that's a stereotype, call me racist. That was just for starters, of course. The illegal immigrants, most of whom are Mexican, are mostly Indian or of mixed blood. The prosperous ruling tiers of Mexican society have largely European ancestry. They are not the ones leaping the border, but they are responsible for the Mexican economy. I read that 25% of the Mexican economy is money sent from Mexicans working in the U.S.

 

Racism is the belief that some people are inferior because of their genetic heritage. It does not apply to concerns about the economic and political consequences of uncontrolled, illegal immigration by millions of largely uneducated people who may not assimilate. A stereotype, on the other hand, is a generalization about a group of people that's not necessarily negative or false. We have to make generalizations. It is impossible to live only by examining every single example in our experience. Our experience is too limited, for one thing. Generalization is a survival skill.

 

Sometimes my writing may be too telegraphic, and people apply their own preconceptions (I have stereotypes and prejudices; my readers have opinions) to their reading, rather than reading just what's on the page. It took more than two hours of conversation to clarify that one paragraph. We came out of it friendly.

 

One of the reasons I've been writing PO for 4 1/2 years is to discipline my thinking. I've had the same automatic responses triggered by the same sort of words that set off the aforementioned reader. I still find myself knee-jerking, but sometimes in different directions. Like my knee has kicked sideways, or maybe has a U-joint implant.

 

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Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

 

 

 

 

 

Parvum Opus CafePress shop: New: Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse; PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag; "I am here"; "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"; "I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron; Parvum Opus mouse pad; and more!

 

ELSEWHERE

 

Parvum Opus now appears as a Townhall blog: http://parvumopus.townhall.com/

and is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

 

NEW! SHORT ORDER

Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5 each (includes mailing).

///  In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young computer guy who dreams of becoming a big-time gambler sets up web sites for his role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But when Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing concrete boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.

///  Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.

 

GET COMFORTABLE! For women who get massage or chiropractic treatment, who sleep on their stomachs, or have implants, try Rhonda's original Breast Cushion to take the pressure off. Go to www.keithops.us/cushion.

 

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

 

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

 

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

 

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

 

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

 

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.