I’ve posted many stories about funny, silly and strange things students say and do. So I think it will be only fair to start a thread where we’ll share stories about the bizarre, unexpected and unusual things our professors say and do.

College professors do an extremely important job of educating people and conducting research. However, like in any other profession, we get our share of weirdos, ignoramuses, and people who only got their jobs through nepotism. Here is a story of one such prof.

In a graduate course on Latin American literature, a passionate discussion of neo-colonialism unfolded. People were quoting theory left and right, interrupting each other, and developing complex arguments to support their positions. It is normally a professor’s dream to get students so engaged in a discussion that they would burn with the desire to contribute something on the topic.

This, however, was not Professor A’s case. She listened for a while and then interrupted the discussion with, “OK, this is boring! Let me show you photos of how I went to buy a microwave with my mother-in-law over the weekend instead!”

In the stunned silence that ensued, Professor A produced a stack of photos and started passing them around the room while explaining the virtues of each microwave model.

And this, my friends, is why I hate nepotism.

Feel free to share your stories.

Many Conservatives long for a non-existent, mythologized past while many Progressives long for a non-existent, mythologized future. Such Conservatives reject certain aspects of the present objective reality because it doesn’t fit into their doctrine. In the meanwhile, the Progressives reject the way human beings actually are because only the completely different, vastly improved human beings will fit into their doctrine.

Neither group is all that interested in existing people and actual reality. I, for one, can’t say whether I prefer a political movement that exists for the sake of an impossible past or the one that exists for the sake of an equally impossible future. I also can’t say whether a political group that considers people to be a lot worse than they are is preferable to the group that considers human beings to be a lot better than they are.

There is too much myth-making on both sides.

This is the view from our hotel room in St. Louis. Many people consider our tradition of spending weekends on a regular basis in St.Louis hotels to be strange, given that we live so close to the city.

I have to tell you, however, that every such little trip that breaks the routine and is adventurous and refreshing takes the relationship to a new level.

It’s smart money-management, too, because a marriage counselor down the way would cost a lot more than such happy and romantic interludes. And a marriage counselor is definitely less fun.

I asked the students in my online course to introduce themselves before the course begins by leaving a comment on th relevant post of the class blog. Students wrote things like: “I’m Lydia, I’m a Psych major but I have always been interested in Hispanic Civilization,” “I’m James. I’m trying to decide whether to major in French or in Spanish. I’m hoping that this course will help me decide”, etc.

One student, however, wrote the following: “I’m Kyle. I’ve been happily married for 5 years and I’m a father of a beautiful two-year-old baby girl.”

Now I have no idea what to respond to this particular comment. The course hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already weirded out.

Everybody knows this Victorian novelist for his ultra-popular The Moonstone and The Woman in White. However, Wilkie Collins’s lesser known novels are also worth reading. As part of the Classics Challenge, I have read his novel No Name and now regret not placing more of Collins’s books on my Classics list. In my opinion, No Name is a lot better than both of the author’s more popular novels, and I wonder why it isn’t better known.

The greatest achievement of the novel is the protagonist, Magdalen Vanstone. World literature hasn’t produced many images of strong, resourceful, intelligent women. This is why rare exceptions such as Collins’s heroine are so priceless. Magdalen is a woman with a cause, a plan, a dream that she pursues single-mindedly and without any reservations. Thankfully, this dream does not consist of snagging a rich husband with a big mansion, which makes Magdalen very unlike the insipid protagonists of Austin’s novels.

No Name has a very complex plot where two powerful, resourceful women scheme against each other. At a first glance, it seems that the object of their scheming is money. However, one soon realizes that it isn’t about money at all for either of the heroines. Of course, as women of the comfortable, educated class of society, they need some financial means to maintain an existence that will not be too degrading to their sensibilities. However, their struggle for the inheritance allows them to exercise their intelligence in a way that no other pursuits available to women of their class at the time would be able to do.

The ending of the novel is particularly curious. Behind an apparent concession to the patriarchal norms presenting women as pathetic, fragile flowers, the readers can see an alternative vision of reality, one where women remain untamed and undaunted no matter what befalls them.

It’s interesting how the novels with weak and pathetic female characters survive and preserve their popularity a lot better than novels with powerful and complex female protagonists. Everybody is besotted with the inane, weak and weepy protagonists of Pride and Prejudice  Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, etc. but who has heard of Magdalen Vanstone and Aurora Floyd? Bear in mind that the absolute majority of the readership of these novels is and has always been female.

It’s only May but the way the presidential campaign is conducted on both sides has already degenerated to extremely trivial discussions of personalities instead of an intelligent analysis of political and economic programs and positions. The number of times I have heard about Romney’s dog and his teenage pranks is daunting. And yesterday I turned on the Fox News (N. is convinced it is a comedy channel and watches it whenever we stay in the hotel as postprandial entertainment) and saw a long program where people pretended to be scandalized by the text of Obama’s autobiography that has been on the bestseller list  for 4 years. In hushed voices, they informed the country that Obama smoked a few reefers in high school and even – oh, horror! – once extinguished a cigarette butt on a carpet.

Seriously, folks, haven’t we heard enough of carpets that were burned and dogs that were transported carelessly thirty years ago? I have a feeling that after the stories of the candidates’ college years get milked for all they are worth, we will start hearing scandalized reports of how Romney took a toy truck away from another little boy at the age of two and Obama ate too much ice-cream at the age of four. I wonder who will be the first unintelligent commentator to use such childhood stories as proof of Romney’s capitalist greed and Obama’s Socialist self-indulgence.

I’m very sorry for the bathroom picture but I just had to share this great idea practiced at my favorite coffee-shop in St.Louis.

Imagine a person running in for a cup of coffee early in the morning on her way to work. She’s sleepy, maybe worried about the day ahead, going over everything she needs to do on that day in her head. And then she rushes into the bathroom and sees her own reflection in the mirror with the words “Good Person” superimposed on her image. “Yes,” she suddenly remembers, “I am a good person.”

I find this to be very uplifting.

Once again, sorry for the toilet imagery on the blog.

Right after I unpacked on my return from Europe, I had to pack another suitcase because we are off on a romantic getaway to celebrate N’s birthday. I can’t tell you what the final destination of the trip is because it’s a surprise for N, and I don’t want him to wander onto the blog and discover it ahead of time.

But I’ll post photos of the secret final destination tomorrow.

On the negative side, my favorite restaurant in St. Louis has closed. It turned out to be too hard to maintain in the difficult economic times. The irony is that it closed down the same weekend when its very talented chef won a prestigious cooking award. Our trip starts and ends in St. Louis, and I hoped to visit this great restaurant as a final stop on the journey. Unfortunately, St.Louis didn’t manage to preserve this chic and expensive restaurant.

I know have a second blog. It’s a blog where I will conduct my summer online course. The course starts on May 23, and already students have started registering and leaving comments on the course blog. (The university enjoined me from making the blog open to the general public which is why the students have to register).

As I sit with two blogs open in my browser and commenting on both of them, I keep fearing that I will get confused and will forget which is which. The last thing I need is to regale my students with a few “vile freakazoids” in the course of teaching.

This will be my very first online teaching experience, and I wonder how it will work out.

Unlike the Londoners, the inhabitants of Berlin work hard to preserve the face of their city, its uniqueness, its beautiful buildings.

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