About the blog name: "Gently Hew Stone" is a pun on the author's name. Michelangelo said that while carving his statue of David, he envisioned the finished statue inside the block of raw marble and just chiseled away the pieces that weren't part of it. Writing this blog is like that: I picture myself sitting before a hunk of raw possibilities with this keyboard as my chisel, and my labor of love is to reveal the beautiful ideas inside, to hone it to perfection by peeling away layers of ordinary thought and, ultimately, to bring to light the masterpieces just below the surface of it all.
Once or twice a year I’ll spend part of a class day just letting the students ask me questions about anything, and we have conversations about whatever topics they come up with. I wonder how that would work here.
Here’s your chance, anonymous denizens of the Internet, to ask me whatever you can imagine. Impress me. Challenge me on issues, ask about my real life, quiz me, ask for advice, whatever. I promise not to lie in any response, but I do reserve the right to be evasive or sarcastic, of course. I’ll let questions collect on this thread for a while, then answer them all. As I warn my students, whether or not this is entertaining depends mostly on the quality of what you ask, so take advantage of this open forum.
Now here’s hoping I just get more than one or two questions…
When I was an undergrad, my parents were on a vacation on the east coast and found a UNLV tie, which they got as a present for me. This is now my most cherished tie, and not just for sentimental reasons. I’m sure nobody could find one like it anymore.
See the gun that he’s carrying? In 1997, the school redesigned the mascot (“Hey Reb”), mostly by taking away the gun. He hasn’t been seen with it for over a decade. A bow to political correctness, I suppose.
By the way, I’ve always wondered why our mascot is a Southern rebel. Nevada was created as a Union state, after all. Is it because we’re to the south of our primary rival, the blue-wearing UNR?
At any rate, I love my gun-toting Rebel and will always cherish this tie.
As long as I can remember, people have told me that I should be on the radio. I guess I have a pretty good voice. And I don’t mind discussing decent topics when the muse strikes.
So after a few years of hearing about it, I went down Saturday morning to try out for KXNT 840 AM’s “Radio Star 5″ contest. It’s an annual thing where they let people come down to the South Point Hotel and Casino and let them be on the radio for a few minutes, talking spontaneously about a topic chosen from a short list, and the best ones enter a further round, where an ultimate single winner gets to be a part-time personality for the station.
I put on a tie and got there very early, both of which made zero difference. I looked at the four topic choices–domestic partnerships, federal holidays, term limits, and mass transportation–and thought I could give a decent audition about the holiday one. I turned in my application first, and got to be the first one to go up on stage and show off my stuff for the regular hosts.
I gave a short speech about making Constitution Day a federal holiday because it would help promote literacy on the subject and make our electorate more informed. Sadly, I wasn’t supposed to give a speech. I was supposed to pretend that I was hosting the show and get callers to chime in with their opinions. Oops. So I was unceremoniously dismissed, and then drove home listening to far more fluent and chatty contestants strutting their stuff.
So there’s absolutely no hope that my “audition” will get me to the next round–the top 20 from which the final winner will be chosen. But a lot of the best performers were trying out for the second or third time, and I made some notes and will review them before I try out again next year.
I met some great people and had some fun, even though my kids heard me on the radio and made fun of me.
But seriously, Constitution Day should really be a federal holiday. September 17, people.
Last Monday as I drove to work for the first day of school, I flipped through radio stations hoping to find a song that might serve as a good omen for the year. The soft adult contemporary station was playing Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young.” Hmmm…nope. The classic rock station was playing The Who’s “Baba O’Riley;” you know, the one that goes, “It’s only teenage wasteland.” Heh heh. Nice.
But a couple of days later the same station was playing “School’s Out For Summer.” Really, classic rock station? On the third day of school? That’s just mean.
*****
My class sizes are pretty bad, just like every one else’s. My smallest class has 36. I have two classes at 45. At least I don’t teach freshmen. Thanks, budget cuts!
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In one of the sections of English 101 that I have two nights a week at UNLV, I saw a familiar face. Turns out he’s a kid I had his first year in high school, four years ago. I guess he wasn’t looking forward to another year with me: he dropped the class the next day. I’ll try not to take that one personally!
*****
I got a lot of traffic for a post I wrote last week about my teaching resolutions for the new year. I forgot a very important one: never again will I ever refer to a student aide as “yon servant wench.” Apparently, nobody thinks this is funny except me. But now who will fetch me flagons of grog?
*****
I usually get a sore throat by the end of the first week, but this year I got it by day two. Not a good sign. Must be getting old. I feel much better after the weekend, so we’ll see how it goes today. I look forward to my annual cold by the end of the month. It’s a cruel twist of fate that my easiest month of the year–August–tends to be followed by my hardest–September.
*****
We went to a football game Friday, which was fun, except it was hot and there were teenagers there. I forgot, that’s why I never see popular movies on opening night, too. We moved to the very edge of the stands, where it was much cooler and there was a lot less cussing. I noticed the visitor side, which was sedate and comfortable. The next time we see a football game, it will be when we’re the visiting team!
*****
At the end of the fist week every year, I have every student write a letter about themselves, their goals and opinions for the year, and I seal it up and lock it in a drawer until the last week of school. No matter how much I tell girls not to write that they’ll be with their boyfriends forever, most do, and they end up laughing or crying when they get the letter back in June. This is also a good illustration of transiency around here. Though some kids remember to ask for their letters when they move, most of us forget these for most of the year, and even though I try to track down the kids who are still at our school but in different classes, every June I end up throwing away at least two dozen letters, and a good fourth of the class in June won’t get a letter because they weren’t here the first week of school. Way to be stable, Mom and Dad!
*****
I’ve only scared three kids out of my honors class so far. Must. Try. Harder.
I enjoy the Star Wars movies, but I’m not nearly so rabid about it as many of my generation. Perhaps that’s why I’ve especially liked two things I’ve read recently: this, a detailed reflection on the several awful drafts of the first Star Wars script before the 1977 movie was finally made, and this, a run down of some of the biggest logical loopholes in the physical designs of that universe.
The best part of the latter is reading the superior comments from readers, and the best part of the former is seeing just how many of Lucas’s original ideas–which were far too lame and got cut from the first Star Wars film he made–mostly got recycled and ended up in the prequel trilogy. As if we needed more vindication for hating Episode I.
Speaking of the prequels, here’s a huge failure of reason from Episode II that I’ve never figured out. Why the heck does the Republic, much less the Jedi, trust the clone army in the first place? Obi Wan finds that the army was created–allegedly–under the secret auspices of a dead Jedi master, but was clearly done so without the consent of the Jedi council. Further, the army was patterned after a mysterious bounty hunter who tried to kill Obi Wan. And didn’t it strike anyone as suspicious that this army just happened to show up at the precise time that the Republic found its resources strained by new hostilities and in need of more muscle? Shouldn’t that alone have made people leery of bringing these guys on board?
I mean, if America were suddenly under increasing siege, and the president’s advisers found that someone had just finished secretly training an army for decades under the orders of a former high ranking general–but who had launched the program without the authorization of the president–and those soldiers had been trained and molded in the exact pattern of a known terrorist, wouldn’t you think we just might not send those guys right into action for us?
I just sent the following email to “bob@aol.com,” a complete stranger who I can only assume exists. I remember in college in the mid to late 90’s, there were plenty of people who figured that all email addresses were “@aol.com,” so it makes sense that some awesome individual snatched up “bob” in fairly short order.
Hello, “Bob,” you don’t know me; I’m just a random blogger who wondered how awesome someone would have to be, and just what a plugged in, far-seeing, cutting edge type they would have to be, in order to have an email address as basic as “bob@aol.com.” That one must have gone pretty quickly! I figure you must have registered this address no later than 1995.
Would you be willing to answer a few quick questions for me and my readers? I can only imagine that you must be a fascinating person, and I’d like to know some more about you. Certainly, no personal information is needed. Thank you in advance for your time and any help you can give.
1. When did you register this address?
2. Has anyone ever tried to get you to give it away, or buy it from you?
3. Do you get a lot of emails like this one, or spam, or email meant for someone else?
4. What other interesting experiences have you had as “bob@aol.com?”
5. Anything else you’d care to share with us?
Here’s an arbitrary milestone that captures the essence of what I hope to create here: as of today, this blog now employs over a thousand individual subject tags. Some day, I’d like to have ten thousand. And then, the world is mine! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Pop quiz time, folks. There are only four teams in the NBA whose names do not end in “s:” the Utah Jazz, the Orlando Magic, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and _________. The first person to comment with the right answer (without looking it up, please!) may email me their physical address and get their choice of a banana peel, a dead spider, or some pocket lint.
Last week I thought to see if copies of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, his sequel to The Da Vinci Code, were available to put on hold at the library yet. It’s due to be released in September, so I thought it might still be too early.
Nope, not too early. I’m number 340 in line. Clearly, plenty of people are having the same idea. In fact, as of right now, there are a total of 429 people waiting for this one on the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District’s Web site. If you live around here, you might want to put your marker down for it now: I can only wonder how many people will have it on hold by the time it actually comes out in two months!
I enjoyed the dumb fun of The Da Vinci Code, balanced by some neat trivia and clever cliffhangers on one hand with a very poorly researched and defended controversial thesis on the other. The Lost Symbol is about Freemasonry, and there have been some hints that Brown may delve into the early Mormon Church’s associations with it. That creates a personal interest for me, and I’m curious to see if he handles it accurately or pumps it up for sensationalism.
It looks like the library district is ordering about 150 copies, and with new books checked out for seven days, I’ll still have to wait a few extra weeks to read it. I’ll have a detailed review ready sometime in October.
There’s no such thing as “flat.” We call things flat because they appear to have no depth, but everything has depth, otherwise it couldn’t physically exist. Everything, no matter how seemingly “flat,” has three dimensions.
Consider a sheet of paper. Flat, right? Nope. It’s depth might be microscopic, but it’s there. How can we tell that something has depth? Easy: something has to be separating the front side from the back side. If there are two sides, there must be something between them, some point at which one ends and the other begins. Therefore, a piece of paper does have some tangible thickness in its edge.
So if anything that has two sides must be three dimensional, conceivably, any truly flat object–any truly two dimensional object–would have to be transparent from behind. No depth means no back side allowed.
Church. I use my car to give people rides to church and to other activities or meetings; not often, but sometimes. I also take a young man in my ward around to collect fast offerings each month, and give rides to groups when we’re going to the temple or having an activity not at church for Mutual. Not having those extra seats might make all that a lot harder.
Also church. Will it compromise my ecclesiastical authority to show up at someone’s house for a ministry visit or to extend a calling if I’m on a Harley?
Family. I don’t have the kids with me in the car too often, but it does happen. If our family grows any more, or if we have friends along, we’ll need two vehicles to carry us all. I don’t have occasion to use these extra seats very often, but it’s like living in Las Vegas in general: I rarely utilize 24 hour taco shop drive thrus, but it’s nice to know that the option is always there. Also, would my wife want me to take her out on dates if she was riding on the back of a motorcycle, or would this mean that we’d always have to take her van?
Transporting items. I carry stuff around a lot more often than I carry people. Going between work, church, and a ton of other places (especially the library!), my stash of cargo can get quite bulky. On a motorcycle, I’d be forced to drastically reduce my load.
Audio. I like to listen to soft music or foreign language CDs in the car. On a bike, that option is gone.
License Plate. I suppose I’d have to give up my beloved “BKFMRMN” license plate. I’m not sure it’s done any good, anyway. *sigh*
PRO:
Passengers pliable. I can work around transportation issues. People can help with rides, sometimes a single person could ride on the back, or we could use two vehicles. It might be slightly inconvenient at times, but it would work out.
Audio overrated. Honestly, I spend most of my driving time listening to talk radio, anyway. I can do without it.
Money. This would save a TON on insurance and gas. If I’m smart, I could probably make a profit on trading my car in for a bike (it doesn’t have to be a Harley).
Presenting Stephen Duffy’s 1985 hit “Kiss Me.” Catchy song, ridiculous 80’s video. He wrote this version of the song in 1984; does it bother anybody else that stuff from that year is now a quarter century old? It just doesn’t seem right somehow.
Watching Sesame Street with my daughter just now, I saw a segment where a hard-boiled private detective was trying to discover the letter of the day. As he searched his office he found…a lizard eating an ice cream cone. At the same time, my daughter had laid out a dinosaur-themed coloring book for the two of us to color in as we watched. She opened it up to a random page in the middle, which happened to be a picture of…a lizard eating an ice cream cone.
Now, I imagine that the odds of seeing a single lizard eating an ice cream cone on any given day are probably pretty low, but the odds of seeing two unrelated lizards eating ice cream cones–at the exact same time–are most likely even worse than that. Maybe even as low as the odds of Michael Bay directing a movie without car chases and/or explosions, Joe Biden going a week without saying something remarkably inane, or Paris Hilton ever exhibiting a quiet, dignified nobility.
And yet, it happened. Check this off of your list of signs of the times, folks.
The new list ranking the popularity of LDS-themed blogs by individuals (as opposed to group blogs) is out, and yours truly is tearing up the charts. Seven months ago I was #72 on the list; as of last month, I’m at #50.
With a bullet.
On the list of religious, satirical, literary, conservative, and education-themed blogs, though, I’m still hovering around #29,000. Darn all those whimsical, existentialist, libertarian, Hindu teacher blogs!
To those who followed the link from my (awkwardly written) comment on a post at the excellent “First Thoughts” blog, welcome! Browse around and let me know what you think. Please let me recommend this post from a few weeks ago, about a man whom I greatly admire, Pope Benedict XVI.
