On grades in an academic-writing course in Basel

At the end of the past semester, I discussed the issue of grades with the students in my two sections of the University of Basel English Department's "Academic Writing in English II" course. As it's a pass-fail course, I wondered if they found the grades I gave their essays useful. Several of the students said that they did find them useful, but they added that they wondered if that was just because they were used to having grades. With the pass-fail course, I could stop using grades, but higher-level seminar papers in the department are still officially graded, so I'm pondering whether it's useful to continue grading in the course anyway. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 11 July 2022)

A red card in a football match – but the team was allowed to replace the player

About twenty minutes into the friendly between FC Basel and Neuchâtel Xamax this afternoon, a Xamax player received a red card for a serious foul. After the players calmed down (and a Basel player received a yellow card, too), the referee and the head coaches had a discussion for several minutes. As everyone got ready to start play again, I noticed there were still eleven Xamax players on the field. The player who received the red card had been sent off, but Xamax had been allowed to replace him. I concluded that Basel did not want to play their friendly against a ten-man team and had thus arranged this unusual solution. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 10 July 2022)

The poems and texts that are no longer on the Pont de l'Europe between Strasbourg and Kehl

In 1999, I translated a short poem by Durs Grünbein (whose title I can't remember and haven't found in my old files) that was part of a project honoring the 50th anniversary of the Council of Europe: forty European writers, including not only Grünbein but also Seamus Heaney and Czesław Miłosz, were asked to contribute a text for a permanent installation on the Pont de l'Europe between Strasbourg and Kehl. My translation was included in a book published to mark the occasion. Today, I went to the Pont de l'Europe to see the installation, but unfortunately, although the forty small display pillars are still there, the texts are no longer displayed. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 9 July 2022)

Grateful Dead songs from the band's and the audience's perspective: "Playing in the Band" and "The Music Never Stopped"

"Playing in the Band", a 1971 Grateful Dead song with lyrics by Robert Hunter and music by Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, describes a concert scene from the perspective of one of the musicians on stage and ends in the early morning: "Daybreak, while I'm playing in the band." In 1975, for "The Music Never Stopped" on the band's "Blues for Allah" album, John Perry Barlow wrote lyrics for Weir's music that took the audience's perspective and also ended in the early morning: "Keep on dancing through to daylight. Greet the morning air with song. No one's noticed but the band's all packed and gone. Was it ever here at all?" (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 July 2022)

A sluggish day after a coronavirus vaccination shot

After my booster shot of the coronavirus vaccine yesterday morning (my fourth in all), I was fine through the afternoon and evening, so I thought I might get through this one without any effects. But at night, I slept very poorly, with vivid, disjointed dreams that immediately vanished from memory whenever I woke up enough to know I was awake. The fatigue I have felt all day could be from lack of sleep or from the shot. And an experience I had forgotten from the earlier shots has come back: a stiffness in my upper arm that only becomes pain when I raise the arm above my shoulder for any reason. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 July 2022)

An outing on a beautiful morning in Basel

On this beautiful morning in Basel, I took a tram to a tram and walked to a building I've been to three times recently. The guard checked my backpack and let me in. I sat in a row of chairs and moved forward until it was my turn to show my identification. After paying, I sat in another row of chairs and moved forward until it was my turn. A young woman took me into a small room, asked me several questions, and then poked my upper arm with a needle. Then I had to wait fifteen minutes before doing the last paperwork and heading back out into the beautiful morning. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 July 2022)

A mass shooting on the Fourth of July

On Twitter, Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime died in the 2018 shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, commented on yesterday's shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois: "On Independence Day, a uniquely American holiday, the most uniquely American thing happened today, a mass shooting." I first heard about the shooting when a friend who lives there posted about it on Facebook; his teenage daughter was texting all her friends to see if they were okay. I've seen people mark themselves safe on Facebook for fires and hurricanes before, but this was the first time I saw that because of a mass shooting. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 5 July 2022)

Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" in 2022

Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech in Rochester, New York, which he gave on 5 July, is now usually known by a modified version of a line from it: "What to the [American] Slave is the Fourth of July?" Recent political developments in the United States, especially the revelations about the events of 6 January 2021 and the latest Supreme Court decisions, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, made me wonder about revisions of Douglass's speech from the perspective of such groups as Black women, LBTQ+ people, or immigrants (with or without papers), and I found one variation: Melishia Brooks's 2018 essay "What to the Black Woman is the Fourth of July?" (Andrew Shields, #111words, 4 July 2022)

 

Toni Morrison's "Jazz", the 1917 East St. Louis riots, and the Silent Parade in New York City

In Toni Morrison's "Jazz" (1992), Alice Manfred holds her niece Dorcas's hand and watches the march commemorating the Black victims of the riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, from 1-3 July 1917: "Alice thought the lowdown music (and in Illinois it was worse than here) had something to do with the silent Black women and men marching down Fifth Avenue to advertise their anger over two hundred dead in East St. Louis, two of whom were her sister and brother-in-iaw, killed in the riots." This Silent Parade of eight to fifteen thousand people, organized by the Harlem chapter of the NAACP, took place in New York City on 28 July 1917. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 July 2022)

Philosophy in the pub

Since I caught up with The History of Philosophy without Any Gaps podcast and can only listen to one episode a week, I've started listening to another philosophy podcast, Philosophy Bites. My favorite moment so far came in a 2007 episode with Edward Craig on "What is Philosophy?" Asked whether two non-philosophers discussing philosophical issues in a pub are doing the same thing as Craig and his fellow professional philosophers, he said that they are, but then made the following comment: "Should the guy in the Dog and Duck say something that's really sharp and original, it's likely to pass in the Dog and Duck for just something else he's said." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 July 2022)

Casa, cosa, caso – and coso, the Spanish word for thingamajig or whatshisname

Two words I learned right when I started with Spanish were casa (house) and cosa (thing). Later, I learned caso (case or fact). Sometimes, when they come up in my vocabulary exercises, I mix them up and think cosa for caso, say. Just now, caso came up, so I ran through all three to make sure I was keeping them straight. And then I wondered whether coso is a word in Spanish, so I looked it up on wordreference.com – and I burst out laughing, because the first translation for coso is thingamajig, doohickey, and whatshisname (as well as arena or bullring, and main street). That's a very useful word to know! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 1 July 2022)

Cassidy Hutchinson, Donald Trump, and "say something to the effect of/that"

During her January 6th Committee testimony, Cassidy Hutchinson, former assistant to President Trump's last White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly used the phrase "say something to the effect" to mark non-verbatim quotations: "I overheard the president say something to the effect of: 'I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me.'" On English-corpora.org, I found many examples of this phrase, including one by Trump himself during the Republican primary season in February 2016: "The Pope said something to the effect that maybe Donald Trump isn't Christian." It's a common phrase, of course, so this find doesn't "say something" to any effect beyond its serendipity. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 30 June 2022)

Slipping away with Neil Young and Crazy Horse: "Broken Arrow" and the Zurich concert in 1996

Yesterday, I listened to Neil Young's 1996 album with Crazy Horse, "Broken Arrow," and remembered their concert at the Hallenstadion in Zurich on 20 June 1996. The album had not yet been released, so "Big Time", "Loose Change", "Slip Away", and "Music Arcade" were all new to me. The first three are full-throttle electric Crazy Horse, with "Slip Away" capturing the overwhelming effect of Neil's incomparable electric-guitar playing: "And when the music started, she just slipped away." But I hummed the acoustic "Music Arcade" all the way home: "Have you ever been lost? Have you ever been found out? Have you ever felt all alone at the end of the day?" (Andrew Shields, #111words, 29 June 2022)

Throwing dishes against the wall: The violence of the real-estate developer

On Friday, 22 July 2016, I wrote an erasure of a speech "given last night in Cleveland by a real-estate developer with authoritarian delusions of grandeur", as I put it when I posted the poem "I Can Be Your White Champion" on my blog. In it, I tried to draw out and emphasize how violent the imagery in the speech was. Later, after almost four years as President of the United States, that real-estate developer encouraged the violence of the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021 – and while President, he also regularly threw dishes against the wall. The violence he described was not in the world but in himself. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 June 2022)

 

On Stan Wawrinka's three Grand Slam titles and the Big Five

As Stan Wawrinka warms up for his first-round match at Wimbledon against tenth-seeded twenty-year-old Jannick Sinner, his best results at Grand Slams were just posted on the screen: two quarterfinals at Wimbledon (2014 and 2015), and of course his three victories (Australian Open 2014, Roland Garros 2015, US Open 2016). In each of those finals, he defeated the player who was then ranked number one: Rafael Nadal in the first and Novak Djokovic in the other two. And he won all three in four sets. With his three titles, he deserves to be considered part of a Big Five for this era, along with Nadal, Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Andy Murray. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 27 June 2022)

Trump's "What do I have to lose" on 3 Janaury 2021 as an admission that he knew he had lost the 2020 Presidential election

In April 2020, I wrote about President Donald Trump saying "what do you have to lose?" in two contexts: addressing African-Americans in 2016 and discussing hydroxychloroquine early in the coronavirus pandemic. In both cases, he addressed people in what he saw as a bad situation. Recently, the January 6 Committee revealed his use of the same question with respect to himself in the meeting on 3 January 2021 at which he tried to make Jeffrey Clark Acting Attorney General: "What do I have to lose?" Given his earlier uses of the phrase, this is tantamount to an admission that he knew very well that he had lost the 2020 Presidential election. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 June 2022)

 

The inconsistency is the point: On the Supreme Court's gun and abortion rulings

Yesterday, after the publication of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted that "[t]he implausible inconsistency of the guns and abortion rulings is both sickening and revealing." I would add that, to paraphrase Adam Serwer, the inconsistency is the point. The contradiction between governmental intervention in the case of abortion and the denial of governmental intervention in the case of guns makes clear that the point is not to provide a consistent ideological position but rather to assert power without any need for justification. The contradictions between (and even within) the rulings further the straightforward seizure of unlimited power by white, male, heterosexual, Christian, cisgender supremacy. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 25 June 2022)

Justice Thomas calls for what Justices Alito and Kavanagh deny: The overturning of contraception rights, consensual homosexuality, and marriage equality

In their opinions on the Dobbs case that overturns Roe v. Wade, both Justice Alito and Justice Kavanagh dismiss the point in the dissent by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan that overturning Roe "calls into question Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell" (the first two are on contraception, the third on consensual homosexuality, the fourth on marriage equality). But in his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas actually does call for those very cases to be reconsidered: "[I]n future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." Alito and Kavanagh both allude to Loving as well (mixed-race marriage), which is noticeably absent from Thomas's list. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 24 June 2022)

Deplorable decisions by the United States Supreme Court in Vega v. Tekoh and in Bruen

While we await the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US Supreme Court's forthcoming Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, we can deplore today's decisions from the court. In Vega v. Tekoh, the court ruled by 6-3 (with all the Republican appointees in the majority) that if you're not read your Miranda rights (such as the right to remain silent), you cannot sue the government for using what you say against you. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the court ruled by 6-3 (guess who) that New York's century-old-law controlling firearm possession is unconstitutional. As Elie Mystal tweeted, this "turns every state into Texas." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 23 June 2022)

The "copoll" and the "pinker sister" in James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake"

In the passage we discussed from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" in this evening's reading group, a conversation takes place on a carriage ride "while daisy winks at her pinker sister among the tussocks and the copoll between the shafts mocks the couple on the car" (53.9-11). At first, we thought there were two couples here, but "copoll" is a Joycean variation on the Irish "capall", which means "horse", so the horse is making fun of the couple in the carriage as they pass the daisies by the side of the road. We didn't pin down the daisy's "pinker sister" as a particular flower (and no resources I've checked have mentioned it). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 22 June 2022)