My artistic vision

So the other day I posted a picture on Facebook of this "band saw box," made of walnut. To my surprise, it attracted many "likes" and positive comments, for which I am grateful.

While my ego rejoices, I think that the description I posted may have had something to with people's response:

Walnut "bandsaw" box in an organic style. Antique oil finish.

Hmm ... "in an organic style," eh? Classy! Or is that just a fancy way of saying "can't cut a straight line on a band saw"? Maybe, but it certainly sounds cool ... perhaps to the point where I must admit that I oversold the box.

Anyhow, that was the end of my rumination on the topic until my wife told me that her coworker admired the photo but thought that the box was actually a large nightstand or dresser sized object ... and I guess that, at a casual glance, the baseboard in the photo (because that's what it is) could be taken for wainscoting.

That would be a hell of a bandsaw, and a hell of a chunk of walnut. But I do like the box, and it's pretty good for a first attempt. It was a lot of fun to make, but LOTS of sanding, meaning lots of walnut dust to inhale and ingest. The piece may be a keeper, but it's not big enough to keep your socks and undies in. 

Now I'd like to show you my latest artistic creation, "Bol Cedre III."

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins"

As you can see, this unfinished piece deconstructs the very nature of the bowl: its "lip" is jagged, its peaks and striations suggestive of an almost lunar landscape. It is the death of bowls.

And it demonstrates what happens to a finely turned, almost-done cedar bowl when the wood splits and cracks at about 1700 rpm. Another one for the burn pile.

But ... I don't know ... to me, it looks kind of ... "organic" in style, no? I wonder what it would like like with an Antique Oil finish?

Here I go again on my own

It's that time of year again when I prepare to piss in academia's collective cornflakes. Yes, the Beloit "Mindset List" is out for the class of 2014. Ostensibly created 'way back when to keep college instructors "aware of dated references," it instead inspires my annual full-body cringe, because in spite of its intention, it appears to me to be a thinly-veiled excuse for the most educated people in society to gloat over the ignorance of their charges. Why? I don't know, but it's probably because they fear death.

But let's get this out of the way first. I know it's a list, and on the internet lists validate everything, but explain to me what can possibly be meant by "11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis." Sorry, but W? T? (to the) F? Can I say that "John F. Kennedy never lived" because I was born in 1964? Could Chaucer say that the Norman Conquest never happened? Can baby boomers everywhere say the Holocaust never happened? (I know genocide is a touchy subject, but check out, if you will, #32).

Isn't there a better way of saying what you mean, whatever that is?

Or are we really just implying that college students are incapable of knowing anything they didn't personally experience? If you really believe that, why are you spending your time trying to educate them?

Listen: public higher education is suffering greatly at least in part because academics in many fields spent more than a generation insisting on, even reveling in the very irrelevance of their gloriously postmodern enterprises. Maybe they were saying it because it was "true," but given that there is (it turns out) no such thing as "truth," I doubt it. It's just unfortunate that they were so successful in teaching a generation of policymakers that part of the lesson. Now everybody knows that you don't need to know about Beowulf, Sir Gawain, Elizabeth Bennet, or Molly Bloom, the Renaissance, the Reformation, or the Industrial Revolution, in order to be a successful legislator or even president. You want to chuckle wisely over the stuff these students don't know? They're the least of our worries. You want to alienate them on the first day of class? Hand this list out and gloat a little because at least you know who Beavis and Butthead are.

Guess what, folks: we think our students are ignorant? Well, our professors thought we were ignorant. Their professors thought they were ignorant. Educators have always bemoaned the crappiness of their students and the moral decay of the system (check out Glenn Ford in Blackboard Jungle, 1955). Their ignorance is our livelihood. The Gawain poet says that heroes were really heroes back in King Arthur's time. Yes, those were certainly the days.

Oh, but I forgot. Like the Depression, like Watergate, like the K-car, those days probably "never happened."

The list? There's some interesting stuff there, I guess ... but gang, it's about how out of it we are. And if you're getting ready to walk into that classroom and rock their worlds and change their lives, think twice about leading off by using this list as a "Let me tell you how little you know" toy. I don't know whether that approach will fit with their "mindset."

And for the record, I hate the word "mindset."

People need to stop messing with my stuff

Reading over some of my old posts from the last couple of years, I can't say that I'm overjoyed at the way the entities who actually own the material in Youtube videos have forced said 'tube to remove said material in the interest of protecting their copyrights. Because I gotta tellya, it interferes pretty seriously with some of the humorous juxtapositions with which I like to punctuate my pontificatin'. The nerve of these people! The hubris!

Even more irritating is when I dutifully posted the ostensibly legal links to material from MTV or Comedy Central, only to find that they are now dead. I try to play fair, people, but fair is a moving target, and as I've asked about other moving targets in the past, how come the moving target never seems to move any closer?

Of course, as a wannabe content provider myself, I take a much dimmer view of copyright infringement than I may have in the past. This not to say I wouldn't still be overjoyed if somebody thought any of the songs I helped to write were good enough to steal, which as far as I know hasn't happened yet ... and let's face it, that window of opportunity has probably sailed.

But the textbook is a different story, especially since we actually are getting some modest royalties on it. If I could put the kibosh on the black- and gray-market commerce in the book, I surely would ... including those people who buy exam copies from professors, though I must admit I've been on the offending end of that transaction once or twice or several dozen times.

Last year we received an inquiry from somebody in China asking for permission to translate the book. I had yuan signs in my eyes ... think about how many college students there must be in China--what a market! Turns out he wasn't willing to pay for permission to translate it. Well, crap.

Though I gotta tellya, the idea of all those Chinese students learning about writing about literature from our book (and thus becoming at least associate (if not full) minions)) does have its appeal.