Hello everyone!
The Eclipse
I ventured forth to try and get a glimpse of this thing, but my eyesight is poor, and everywhere I tried, I could only see a blurry image, so I gave up. As soon as I got home, it began to become overcast, and that was the end of that. I must place on record that I have seen an eclipse some years ago, and it was very impressive. I had some sort of equipment then, like a darkened glass, which really worked well.
A local support rally
The progressives in our town got together in a quiet town park, and I quietly attended, trying not to be very visible. I have a retiring nature, and the last thing I need is to be identified as one of these "libtards" who are supposedly destroying American society for everybody. I'm not sure what to make of such claims, but more on that later.
I was deeply moved at what happened at the rally. It was not called a rally, simply because that is almost an invitation for anyone opposed to tolerance and racial harmony to come out and disrupt it. There was no march, no slogans; only appeals for reaching out, forgiving, and patience, and (brace yourself) love. I never thought of myself as a very loving person, but I began to remember the mood of love and peace from the seventies, just as it was beginning to be shut down in the eighties. But warmhearted people are still out there, trying to spread peace and love, but some of this seed falls on barren ground, as they say.
What conservative ideologists have to say
I discovered a paperback for sale in our local supermarket, outlining what one conservative writer thinks is happening in the US. He says that
(1) Liberals have gone overboard about animal rights. Obviously (he says) pets and animals do have some rights, as they would in any decent society. But it looks as if some people want animals to have the same rights as people! This is true, and perhaps it is this sort of thinking that is not yet widely accepted that bolsters the notion that liberals are running away with everything.
(2) Liberals (he says) have some arbitrary principles about how things should be done, and they are forcing everyone to fall in line with these. I suppose he means things like marriage for same-sex couples, and bathroom privileges for trans individuals, and so on. Well, we were on a roll, but some people are frustrated to be on the losing side. It is no longer the losing side; it seems that the present government is comfortable with repealing many of the most progressive laws that were put into place in the last few years. This is the danger of going far and fast; everything can be undone. If you thought Obama was moving too slow, you realize now that consensus building is a very important thing.
Finally, it is clear that conservative businessmen are convinced that the Liberals are taking all their wealth. No, it is not the liberals, it is their fellow-conservatives. When the government takes money in the form of taxes, it is spent, as wages, social services, infrastructure-building (construction), education, libraries, etc. That money is spent in turn by people to buy various goods and services, which of course enrich other businessmen. In contrast, when businessmen and other fat cats are allowed to keep their money without paying taxes, it sits in their bank accounts, making them happy, but out of the reach of their fellow-conservatives, who are anxious to increase their wealth. Big money, is of course, at pains to convince the people that the money simply disappears into Government coffers. If it did, we would not have such a deficit.
Work
I had taken on fewer and fewer teaching jobs over the last few years; I was getting increasingly frustrated with the abilities of incoming students. A few of them are very good, but the vast majority of undergraduates are difficult to teach. I must leave it to more capable people than myself to push through the material that they need to be given; I certainly can't do it.
Personal News
I don't like to reveal too much about myself, nor do I like to burden my readers with things that they would probably not be concerned about. Suffice it to say that I had some minor health problems, but I am bouncing back pretty well. I have not lost my sense of humor, yet, and I will start writing again in the near future.
Reading
You probably realize by now that what I love to read is books I have already read, and the latest are the books of the Anne of Green Gables series. The first book was crafted brilliantly, but the remaining books are also amazingly fresh and rewarding to read. Lucy Maud Montgomery had a delightful sense of humor, and I have to admit that she was able to create a variety of characters that really are three-dimensional, by which I mean that they were distinctive, recognizable types, with consistent characteristics and dialect that she carefully used to keep them alive all through a book, and all through a series. And, of course, the younger characters aged very plausibly. I know how hard that is to do: to make the descriptions of a character, their nature, their personality, their spoken idiom, all age continuously through a story in a plausible way! Of course, the books were originally intended for young people. But there is plenty in them for a mature reader to admire and appreciate.
Kay
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Tricks Authors Use: perhaps we should reexamine these
It’s been a long while since I wrote about fiction writing in the abstract.
I was visiting at the home of a friend, and stayed overnight. In the morning, I came into their television room, to find a particularly violent episode of a TV series playing. I had seen earlier episodes of this series in another location, and I began to think about how TV writers become successful.
Success in TV series writing comes when a TV series grabs the viewers’ attention over several episodes, ideally an entire season. How does one do that?
Increasingly frequently, at least some writers seem to be using hate as a tool. How? They create a character, or an incident, calculated to trigger intense indignation or anger in the viewers. Of course, this has been a time-honored ploy in literature: you always make a favorite character have to suffer something really horrible, and that drives the plot along. But now, with scores of writers competing for the attention of a fickle audience, the less talented among them must invent increasingly horrible things to happen to their heroes, in order to keep their viewers angry enough to tune in to the next episode. On top of everything, drugs, crime and violence in reality seem to compete with fiction to be each more horrible than the other, so what with life out-horrifying art, TV viewers are seeing an fearsome volume of harshness and cruelty on the small screen, and inevitably, the audience becomes jaded, and inured to cruelty.
I, myself, have never been able to create a truly despicable villain. This probably accounts for how little success I have achieved! Still, I despise this whole business of calculatedly creating a villain in order to make a piece of fiction successful. I think a story in which the cruelty is incidental is superior to one in which the cruelty or horror is calculated to arouse the desire to see retribution within the audience.
So, if there are authors among you readers, please consider toning down your imagination for horror, and deliberate cruelty, or ruthlessness. It is a tough assignment, especially in these days when ruthless criminals are a dime a dozen; we almost have to invent a super-ruthless criminal to make any headway. But don’t; the cost is too high. My heart quails to imagine what psychic damage must result in a young person who sees senseless cruelty day after day.
Kay
I was visiting at the home of a friend, and stayed overnight. In the morning, I came into their television room, to find a particularly violent episode of a TV series playing. I had seen earlier episodes of this series in another location, and I began to think about how TV writers become successful.
Success in TV series writing comes when a TV series grabs the viewers’ attention over several episodes, ideally an entire season. How does one do that?
Increasingly frequently, at least some writers seem to be using hate as a tool. How? They create a character, or an incident, calculated to trigger intense indignation or anger in the viewers. Of course, this has been a time-honored ploy in literature: you always make a favorite character have to suffer something really horrible, and that drives the plot along. But now, with scores of writers competing for the attention of a fickle audience, the less talented among them must invent increasingly horrible things to happen to their heroes, in order to keep their viewers angry enough to tune in to the next episode. On top of everything, drugs, crime and violence in reality seem to compete with fiction to be each more horrible than the other, so what with life out-horrifying art, TV viewers are seeing an fearsome volume of harshness and cruelty on the small screen, and inevitably, the audience becomes jaded, and inured to cruelty.
I, myself, have never been able to create a truly despicable villain. This probably accounts for how little success I have achieved! Still, I despise this whole business of calculatedly creating a villain in order to make a piece of fiction successful. I think a story in which the cruelty is incidental is superior to one in which the cruelty or horror is calculated to arouse the desire to see retribution within the audience.
So, if there are authors among you readers, please consider toning down your imagination for horror, and deliberate cruelty, or ruthlessness. It is a tough assignment, especially in these days when ruthless criminals are a dime a dozen; we almost have to invent a super-ruthless criminal to make any headway. But don’t; the cost is too high. My heart quails to imagine what psychic damage must result in a young person who sees senseless cruelty day after day.
Kay
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
A Unique Heroine from the Discworld
I decided to read a book by the late Terry Pratchett last week, and it featured one of Pratchett's most unique characters: Sybil Ramkin.
This is a spoiler, but the story is about the first encounter between Sam Vines, the head policeman with a bad attitude, and Lady Sybil Ramkin, a sort of local aristocrat cat lady, except that her passion was dragons. She had scores of what were described as swamp dragons in her dragon kennels, and was a local authority on the critters.
There's a lot more to the story than that, but we hardly ever read more detail about Lady Sybil than in this book (except for one other story, Snuff, where we hear a lot about Lady Sybil as well). There are leading female characters of many kinds that I have seen: the ultra-girly heroine who clings to her man or her woman, the feisty-but-feminine woman who is always ready with a cutting remark or a piercing glare; the tough woman who never gives up and is a match for most bullies; the elegant, sarcastic woman who is entirely above brawling with anyone; the motherly (or older-sisterly) woman who fiercely defends her brood and all underdogs; and the angry heroine with her back to the wall, who fights back like a cornered rat. But Sybil Ramkin is a little different from any one of these.
Sybil is a distillation of all the delightfully ultra-healthy female aristocrats to be found in British literature; the Tally-ho types simply radiating enthusiasm and fabulous complexions, but are still inexplicably unmarried well past the age at which one expects marriage to take place. They're not tomboys, exactly, but there's a little of that. They're more likely to be indignant or occasionally censorious than bitter, or sarcastic, though Lady Sybil has been occasionally known to resort to sarcasm when taken off her guard. She is Fiercely protective of Sam Vimes, until they're married, and they're blessed with a baby, when Sam is expected to take second place to the precious little brat. Pratchett describes her as big, and in this book one gets the impression that she is bigger than is good for her. In future stories, he moderates this description and conjures up an image of an ample sort of girl, but not one for whose health we feel anxious. There is one odd feature of our fabulous heroine, namely that since her hobby is the breeding of swamp dragons, most of her hair has been flamed off, and she has to resort to wearing wigs. I personally don't have a problem with this, but it conveys an impression of someone who is just a little more out of kilter than I'm willing to support in a heroine. I imagine a hurriedly put on wig, and my mind rejects it. If you're going to wear a wig, it has to be fastened down with the utmost care, and I don't see Sybil taking the time for it. Finally, he describes her as having a big, fruity voice. Booming is the word he uses. Ok, for a piece of humorous fiction booming could be excused, but for a convincing heroine I think we need someone who may look like Liv Tyler, but has a voice more like Dame Maggie Smith, but louder.
It is interesting how Pratchett manages to support the fact that his character is an aristocrat. If you think about it, the biggest tool in the aristocracy toolchest of an author is the aristocratic family. Here, Sybil is an orphan, and her relatives (if any) appear to live far away, in Quirm, or Klatch, or wherever. So Sybil has to be aristocratic all by herelf, supported only by old family retainers, and various ancient heirlooms scattered about her large castle. Nevertheless, Pratchett is able to create almost the most aristocratic aristocrat in the entire Discworld Saga in Lady Sybil Ramkin.
Lady Sybil and Captain Vimes marry, of course, and they're blissfully happy; Pratchett goes to some lengths to portray this marriage as blessed. And, to my mind, this unlikely couple is one of his most fortunate inventions.
Kay
This is a spoiler, but the story is about the first encounter between Sam Vines, the head policeman with a bad attitude, and Lady Sybil Ramkin, a sort of local aristocrat cat lady, except that her passion was dragons. She had scores of what were described as swamp dragons in her dragon kennels, and was a local authority on the critters.
There's a lot more to the story than that, but we hardly ever read more detail about Lady Sybil than in this book (except for one other story, Snuff, where we hear a lot about Lady Sybil as well). There are leading female characters of many kinds that I have seen: the ultra-girly heroine who clings to her man or her woman, the feisty-but-feminine woman who is always ready with a cutting remark or a piercing glare; the tough woman who never gives up and is a match for most bullies; the elegant, sarcastic woman who is entirely above brawling with anyone; the motherly (or older-sisterly) woman who fiercely defends her brood and all underdogs; and the angry heroine with her back to the wall, who fights back like a cornered rat. But Sybil Ramkin is a little different from any one of these.
Sybil is a distillation of all the delightfully ultra-healthy female aristocrats to be found in British literature; the Tally-ho types simply radiating enthusiasm and fabulous complexions, but are still inexplicably unmarried well past the age at which one expects marriage to take place. They're not tomboys, exactly, but there's a little of that. They're more likely to be indignant or occasionally censorious than bitter, or sarcastic, though Lady Sybil has been occasionally known to resort to sarcasm when taken off her guard. She is Fiercely protective of Sam Vimes, until they're married, and they're blessed with a baby, when Sam is expected to take second place to the precious little brat. Pratchett describes her as big, and in this book one gets the impression that she is bigger than is good for her. In future stories, he moderates this description and conjures up an image of an ample sort of girl, but not one for whose health we feel anxious. There is one odd feature of our fabulous heroine, namely that since her hobby is the breeding of swamp dragons, most of her hair has been flamed off, and she has to resort to wearing wigs. I personally don't have a problem with this, but it conveys an impression of someone who is just a little more out of kilter than I'm willing to support in a heroine. I imagine a hurriedly put on wig, and my mind rejects it. If you're going to wear a wig, it has to be fastened down with the utmost care, and I don't see Sybil taking the time for it. Finally, he describes her as having a big, fruity voice. Booming is the word he uses. Ok, for a piece of humorous fiction booming could be excused, but for a convincing heroine I think we need someone who may look like Liv Tyler, but has a voice more like Dame Maggie Smith, but louder.
It is interesting how Pratchett manages to support the fact that his character is an aristocrat. If you think about it, the biggest tool in the aristocracy toolchest of an author is the aristocratic family. Here, Sybil is an orphan, and her relatives (if any) appear to live far away, in Quirm, or Klatch, or wherever. So Sybil has to be aristocratic all by herelf, supported only by old family retainers, and various ancient heirlooms scattered about her large castle. Nevertheless, Pratchett is able to create almost the most aristocratic aristocrat in the entire Discworld Saga in Lady Sybil Ramkin.
Lady Sybil and Captain Vimes marry, of course, and they're blissfully happy; Pratchett goes to some lengths to portray this marriage as blessed. And, to my mind, this unlikely couple is one of his most fortunate inventions.
Kay
Saturday, April 29, 2017
News from Kay
Due to some serious injuries, for which I had to have surgery, I have had to take an extended leave of absence from work, without pay. On one hand, this would seem to suggest that I have a lot more time for writing, but unfortunately it is very painful to type at the computer. I suppose I could try some voice-to-text software, but at the moment I'm just sitting here being sorry for myself!
I do think out plot ideas during these down times, so it's not all a complete waste. But forced inaction is very bad for an author, at least this author.
More later,
Kay
I do think out plot ideas during these down times, so it's not all a complete waste. But forced inaction is very bad for an author, at least this author.
More later,
Kay
Monday, February 6, 2017
Trying to be a whole person in Trump’s America
That heading says it all, doesn’t it?
We all have to battle our tendencies to lie, and cheat, and be selfish, and take mean advantage of weaker people. Some of the weakest people I come across are my students. Some of them cannot do a single thing for themselves, but I just can’t make myself do those things for my students, because there’s a nagging feeling that sooner or later, these kids must learn to take matters into their own hands, and get their own answers. But few of my colleagues really grapple with this problem; they just adopt, wholesale, some approach someone else has advocated. I can’t be that objective about the matter. When I throw them to the wolves, I want to have them watching me throwing them very carefully!
Our public radio station is now hurting for money. At first, I thought, well, the more I support the station, the less the State and the Federal Government is going to support it. If private individuals support it entirely, the government has that much more money for its slush funds, and of course they will just run out and lower taxes. Apparently all the friends of members of State Houses are the super rich, and all they think of doing is lowering taxes at the highest income levels. I just don’t understand it. I would be embarrassed to be known as a friend of the super rich. But not so for lawmakers.
Most of the characters in my stories are soft-hearted, sympathetic people who give, and give, and keep on giving. I’m not that way, and so I suppose I had to make my characters that way, as one method of living a virtuous life vicariously. The very first character I invented, Helen Nordstrom (my friends just could not understand why I chose her to be a Scandinavian-American, since I have practically no Scandinavian heritage whatsoever. I believe that it was so that Helen would have no ethnic traits at all, since Helen’s ancestry plays hardly any role in her story) is an ultra-warm-hearted Polyanna of a girl.
I keep wanting to make Helen have ordinary failings, but I just can’t do it. Her only failing is that she simply cannot resist any girl who makes a play for her; she just swoons right into their arms, with very few exceptions.
I was going somewhere with this, but I need to think it out a little more clearly!
Kay
We all have to battle our tendencies to lie, and cheat, and be selfish, and take mean advantage of weaker people. Some of the weakest people I come across are my students. Some of them cannot do a single thing for themselves, but I just can’t make myself do those things for my students, because there’s a nagging feeling that sooner or later, these kids must learn to take matters into their own hands, and get their own answers. But few of my colleagues really grapple with this problem; they just adopt, wholesale, some approach someone else has advocated. I can’t be that objective about the matter. When I throw them to the wolves, I want to have them watching me throwing them very carefully!
Our public radio station is now hurting for money. At first, I thought, well, the more I support the station, the less the State and the Federal Government is going to support it. If private individuals support it entirely, the government has that much more money for its slush funds, and of course they will just run out and lower taxes. Apparently all the friends of members of State Houses are the super rich, and all they think of doing is lowering taxes at the highest income levels. I just don’t understand it. I would be embarrassed to be known as a friend of the super rich. But not so for lawmakers.
Most of the characters in my stories are soft-hearted, sympathetic people who give, and give, and keep on giving. I’m not that way, and so I suppose I had to make my characters that way, as one method of living a virtuous life vicariously. The very first character I invented, Helen Nordstrom (my friends just could not understand why I chose her to be a Scandinavian-American, since I have practically no Scandinavian heritage whatsoever. I believe that it was so that Helen would have no ethnic traits at all, since Helen’s ancestry plays hardly any role in her story) is an ultra-warm-hearted Polyanna of a girl.
I keep wanting to make Helen have ordinary failings, but I just can’t do it. Her only failing is that she simply cannot resist any girl who makes a play for her; she just swoons right into their arms, with very few exceptions.
I was going somewhere with this, but I need to think it out a little more clearly!
Kay
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Holiday Greetings from Kay Hemlock Brown!
Greetings of the season to all my readers, from me and my extended family!
Some folks can't quite see the point of this frenzied social activity at this time of year, and probably ascribe it to the fact that "Jesus was born on December 25th," and everybody must have got on the bandwagon! In fact, I believe there is more than a little evidence that the historical Jesus was born at another time of year. However, there already was a celebration of the Winter Solstice in Northern Europe, and the leaders of the new-fledged religion simply co-opted it. It was a simple ritual to encourage the Sun into becoming stronger, and to bring the warmer seasons back again. It was a time of getting together in families or villages and celebrating fellowship and friendship, at a time of year when there really wasn't much to celebrate.
There was nothing particularly winter-related in any of the stories of the birth of Christ. The account of the Great Census of Augustus Caesar is based on fact; he did order such a census, but there were several censuses ordered of Syria (and the general region of Palestine) which Christian writers have desperately latched onto, but to my mind seem quite irrelevant. Still, there's nothing to prevent anyone from celebrating the birth of Jesus on any day that they wish, and why not the Winter Solstice?
In any case, several branches of the Human Race, especially those that live outside the tropics, have chosen to celebrate the beginning of a new year at Midwinter, because in civilized times the main occupation of human communities was Agriculture, which would fall in the middle of the year. So what we really celebrate at Christmas is the opportunity to start anew; that any miss-starts of earlier days were erased, and we resume with a clean slate.
Kay
Some folks can't quite see the point of this frenzied social activity at this time of year, and probably ascribe it to the fact that "Jesus was born on December 25th," and everybody must have got on the bandwagon! In fact, I believe there is more than a little evidence that the historical Jesus was born at another time of year. However, there already was a celebration of the Winter Solstice in Northern Europe, and the leaders of the new-fledged religion simply co-opted it. It was a simple ritual to encourage the Sun into becoming stronger, and to bring the warmer seasons back again. It was a time of getting together in families or villages and celebrating fellowship and friendship, at a time of year when there really wasn't much to celebrate.
There was nothing particularly winter-related in any of the stories of the birth of Christ. The account of the Great Census of Augustus Caesar is based on fact; he did order such a census, but there were several censuses ordered of Syria (and the general region of Palestine) which Christian writers have desperately latched onto, but to my mind seem quite irrelevant. Still, there's nothing to prevent anyone from celebrating the birth of Jesus on any day that they wish, and why not the Winter Solstice?
In any case, several branches of the Human Race, especially those that live outside the tropics, have chosen to celebrate the beginning of a new year at Midwinter, because in civilized times the main occupation of human communities was Agriculture, which would fall in the middle of the year. So what we really celebrate at Christmas is the opportunity to start anew; that any miss-starts of earlier days were erased, and we resume with a clean slate.
Kay
Friday, December 16, 2016
Bah humbug! People Who Hate Santa Claus
I was reading a post on Facebook about How to Disclose to your Kid That Santa does not exist materially. (All that means is that, Santa can be considered to exist in some figurative sense, but Santa is not a person whom you can, well, give a real cookie to. Unless you consider Santa to be yourself, in which case you're wasting my time, and you should go elsewhere.)
I did not read the post, because I wasn't interested enough, but from the first several comments I got the impression that it was well written. But then I came across a comment that some people had always hated Santa Claus!
That really got me thinking! Why would anyone hate Santa Claus? I mean, as a symbol of all the over-the-top commercialism of the holiday season, certainly, one can be deeply annoyed at all that he represents! But to me, Santa Claus constitutes the remnants of a medieval bishop who is generally considered to have been greatly loved in his lifetime, and was celebrated as a saint. You can search the Internet for the origins of Santa Claus, and one of the strongest sources for the religious origins is this bishop of a town near Myra in Turkey, belonging to the Orthodox strain of Christianity. Not being unduly religious, I did not look up the dates and the details, but they are not hard to find.
It seems to me that if you hate the commercialism in which people indulge during the holiday season, I think the commercialism should bear the full force of your hatred; Saint Nicholas and his memory should not suffer, surely? This tendency to get upset over symbols is a weakness in our society. Basically, I feel, people indulge in all this furious gift-giving at Christmas to compensate for neglecting their friends the rest of the year. Then they get into the habit of giving expensive but unwanted gifts during the holiday season, and this sets everyone up for being thoroughly depressed because often the gifts don't come up to the expectations of the recipients, and . . . it's too depressing to even follow up on the causes of the depression. I don't give very elaborate gifts; I'm very bad at doing the whole Christmas Presents thing. I strongly believe in appreciating people, but I'm bad at showing my appreciation. My appreciation of particular people is invisible most of them, because I put them in my stories, and they never find out that I have!
This year, especially, I'm feeling the need to appreciate certain people very much, because they wanted so much for the election to turn out differently, and they are intensely cut-up about the outcome. Many of them wanted Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic Candidate, and simply could not cope with Hillary Clinton. Others were delighted that Hillary earned the candidacy, and were stunned that D.T. beat her at the polls--or at least, in the electoral college. There could be any number of surprises on December 19th, when the College assembles to vote, but most of us are going to be disappointed. (I sincerely hope I'm wrong.)
Giving Christmas presents to these disappointed friends of mine are not going to make them feel a whole lot better about the election, but they will certainly be cheered up (I hope) that I thought of them this season. If I can't find something for each of them that they would find useful or entertaining, I'll just keep the money and do something nice for them when the opportunity arises.
My students are just finishing their final examinations, and, as always happens, they will promptly proceed to forget that I ever existed. It is rarely that a college kid remembers the instructors from their freshman courses, unless it is someone utterly charismatic (which I'm not). A pox on charismatic professors, anyway; nobody taught me to be charismatic, and I think college students should learn to be inspired by non-charismatic professors, because sometimes these non-charismatic teachers have the best information.
So, in conclusion, I am definitely on board with consoling my friends with small, useful gifts this season, if I can find appropriate ones.
Kay
I did not read the post, because I wasn't interested enough, but from the first several comments I got the impression that it was well written. But then I came across a comment that some people had always hated Santa Claus!
It seems to me that if you hate the commercialism in which people indulge during the holiday season, I think the commercialism should bear the full force of your hatred; Saint Nicholas and his memory should not suffer, surely? This tendency to get upset over symbols is a weakness in our society. Basically, I feel, people indulge in all this furious gift-giving at Christmas to compensate for neglecting their friends the rest of the year. Then they get into the habit of giving expensive but unwanted gifts during the holiday season, and this sets everyone up for being thoroughly depressed because often the gifts don't come up to the expectations of the recipients, and . . . it's too depressing to even follow up on the causes of the depression. I don't give very elaborate gifts; I'm very bad at doing the whole Christmas Presents thing. I strongly believe in appreciating people, but I'm bad at showing my appreciation. My appreciation of particular people is invisible most of them, because I put them in my stories, and they never find out that I have!
This year, especially, I'm feeling the need to appreciate certain people very much, because they wanted so much for the election to turn out differently, and they are intensely cut-up about the outcome. Many of them wanted Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic Candidate, and simply could not cope with Hillary Clinton. Others were delighted that Hillary earned the candidacy, and were stunned that D.T. beat her at the polls--or at least, in the electoral college. There could be any number of surprises on December 19th, when the College assembles to vote, but most of us are going to be disappointed. (I sincerely hope I'm wrong.)
Giving Christmas presents to these disappointed friends of mine are not going to make them feel a whole lot better about the election, but they will certainly be cheered up (I hope) that I thought of them this season. If I can't find something for each of them that they would find useful or entertaining, I'll just keep the money and do something nice for them when the opportunity arises.
My students are just finishing their final examinations, and, as always happens, they will promptly proceed to forget that I ever existed. It is rarely that a college kid remembers the instructors from their freshman courses, unless it is someone utterly charismatic (which I'm not). A pox on charismatic professors, anyway; nobody taught me to be charismatic, and I think college students should learn to be inspired by non-charismatic professors, because sometimes these non-charismatic teachers have the best information.
So, in conclusion, I am definitely on board with consoling my friends with small, useful gifts this season, if I can find appropriate ones.
Kay
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