Getting back to Latin, this isn’t the first time the issue has surfaced. When the advanced courses in Latin came up for deletion, faculty asked a number of us to look into the problem by consulting with an eminent scholar in the English Department to…
Jimmy Gabacho
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Gabacho– according to the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy– is derived from an old Provençal word “gavach,” meaning a person from the foothills of the Pyrenees who spoke incorrectly. These days, it means “outsider,” somebody who just doesn’t fit in.
If we didn’t have our noble institutions of higher learning, we would most assuredly need more asylums to house the deluded souls of learned men. Apocryphal quotation often attributed to Dr. Johnson Although our universities are filled with eminent scholars, experts in their fields, we…
After hours of obsessing, I still didn’t know what to do about my website. I was lying on the floor of my office, waiting for the vertigo to subside (it looked like I was sleeping) and I reassessed my whole line of thinking. I called a…
I pondered my options. I thought about a letter writing campaign denouncing censorship and demanding a public apology. After all, if they can block my site, where the hell will it end? I still wondered who the culprit was. There’s certainly no shortage of people around…
Another week of institutionalized stupidity. The whole situation has been aggravated by my having to spend hours in front of my computer. The administration (and some wonky faculty committee) changed platforms for the fourth time. So, while those bastards will save a few bucks, those…
From time to time, incoming freshmen ask me if I have any advice to help them make their transition to an independent life.
Here are some basic ideas to keep in mind during the first few years away from home.
- Don’t do anything tonight you don’t want to see on Facebook. There is no way to look classy with your head hanging over a toilet while you barf.
- Read a lot, study and work hard. The greatest trip you can ever imagine begins with a book.
- No amount of drugs or alcohol will make anyone better looking. So it’s a pretty good idea not to go to bed with anyone you don’t want to wake up with. The shock and horror will only be greater after the booze wears off.
- Stay the hell away from Ecstasy or any other drug that makes you love everyone. Not everyone deserves your love and the real thing is a hell of a lot better than that artificial rot. And, if you are one of the lucky ones that finds a person with the courage to love, take it as a blessing.
Among the really good French restaurants in the Windy City, there are: Kiki’s Bistro, Avec, Bistro Zinc, Mon Ami Gabi, Bistro Margot, and La Sardine (and its sister restaurant Le Bouchon). Of all of these, La Sardine has been one of my constant favorites. The…
There were those who just couldn’t keep up. There was this one fat kid from the neighborhood named Eugene that we used to call “Gene-Gene the Dancing Machine.” We didn’t really hang out with him very much, but he was always around. I first got…
Pretty soon, all of our friends were coming out to the bridge, even Billy, the one with the most common sense. He even drove his Mustang out on the service road and parked it along the side of the tracks. Things didn’t always go well. We had our share of mishaps. One day Harold and Billy were throwing rocks off the bridge to see who could throw the highest. Now, these weren’t small rocks; these were the big, thick ones that formed the railroad bed. Harold, who had the best arm, threw one so high into the air that we lost sight of it. I was in the water and Billy tossed a rock down to me so I could try to skip it. I caught it with my left hand and the rock left a deep cut in one of my fingers. A second later, my foot got stuck in the mud; I pulled it out and lost my shoe. So, I was shoeless and bleeding.
II. The bridge was about one hundred feet long and was wide enough for two trains to pass each other at the same time. The passenger trains that ran north and south between Chicago and St. Louis would pass three or four times a day….
Hi, folks: Greg Michie, one of my colleagues on the front lines of the Teachers’ Strike up in Chicago, wrote this article that appeared in the Washington Post this morning. He’s a top notch teacher, both in public schools and at the university level; he’s written…
The Bridge For Billy, Shelly and Harold (where every you guys are) Stephen King’s short story “The Body’ is about group of kids that ventures out into the wilderness to see the body of a boy that had been killed by an oncoming train. The…
Clinton, Illinois is best known for a lake where scores of people from Central Illinois escape the summer heat and humidity. The town is located in the middle of the corn fields, west of Lincoln and South of the Twin Cities, an area not known…