The bike-path grammarian

"There's one more behind us."

It was a loud warning that came from behind.  By now, we are used to all kinds of alerts from bicyclists, old and young.  Some ring a warning bell.  Some just zoom on by catching us by surprise.  A few days ago, an old woman's voice yelled out something like, "please step off the path because there is another bike coming towards me and I have no space."

We literally stepped off the path onto the wet gravelly ground.

She then slowly went past us on a cruiser bike.  Maybe there was no stopping or slowing once she got herself going!

This time, the voice warned us about multiple bikes.  A masked woman passed us, followed by another woman.

I looked behind and there was nobody else.  Why did she yell out "there's one more behind us"?

She should have instead yelled out "one more behind me."  Maybe she also "buys local."  Whom cares, right! ;)

Source

In my early years as a pontificating professor (another alliteration that is also tautological!) in California, it did not take me much time to understand that students in my classes needed to learn how to write at the college level.

I, therefore, did the smartest thing ever: I sought help from the English Department.

I went this route because as much as I emphasized the importance of writing, I was almost always at a loss when it came to explaining to students why something didn't quite feel correct.  There was one particular occasion when a student raised her hand in class and asked for the difference between "affect" and "effect" because I had crossed out her usage of "affect" and written there that she should have used "effect" instead.

I had no clue how to answer that question.  I was stumped.  I told the class that I merely had a feel for it after all the years of working with the language, and that they had to take it up with the writing folks.

From the English Department, Kim loaned me one of her teaching assistants for 30 minutes each week for about six weeks.  One of those was Rebecca.  Once, over lunch when planning for the week's discussion on writing, we talked about books.  To this day, I am pleasantly flummoxed by her response to my question on what book she was reading for fun.  I expected her to respond with an interesting work of fiction.  I certainly did not imagine that the book that she was reading for fun was all about grammar.  Yes, it was about grammar.

I suppose I can confidently state that the biker who yelled about "one more behind us" was not that Rebecca!

Of course, there is more to life than grammar, which is the point of departure for a sacred Hindu prayer.  The first verse is literally about life that is wasted on grammar:

Bhajagovindam bhajagovindam
Govindam bhaja muudhamate
Sampraapte sannihite kaale
Nahi nahi rakshati dukrijnkarane.          
Translation:
Worship Govinda, Worship Govinda,
Worship Govinda. Oh fool!
Rules of Grammar will not save you
At the time of your death.

Rules of grammar will not save me from death.  But, they provide order in the chaos that is called life.

Source

Pedantic is not a compliment

It is a list that gets longer.  A list that gets longer primarily because I am retired, which has released me from the otherwise stressful and time-consuming tasks of grading essays and attending committee meetings.

What is the list?

It is not a to-do list.  Those who have known me for a long time know all too well that I don't do anything.  I used to be a living example of GBS' "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."  Now, I neither do nor teach!

The list is perhaps pedantic, reflecting my old profession.  A "pedantic professor" is an alluring alliteration.  It is also tautological; aren't professors pedantic?

The list of authors of fictional works that I have recently read:

Tahmima Anam's The Startup Wife;

S.J. Sindu's Blue-Skinned Gods and Marriage of a Thousand Lies; 

Anuk Arudpragasam's A Passage North;

Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future.

These authors get added to the list that includes Alan Lightman and Jhumpa Lahiri.

What is so special about these authors?

They earned their PhDs before they became fiction writers of note.  Not honorary doctorates, but earned!

Anam, with Bangladeshi roots, has a PhD in anthropology from Harvard.  Sindu's PhD in creative writing is from Florida State University, and is part of the vast Tamil diaspora.  Arudpragasam, a Sri Lankan Tamil, has a PhD in philosophy at Columbia University. 

Compared to these young authors, Jhumpa Lahiri is old, and Lightman, and Robinson are way old!  Oh, their credentials: Lahiri has a PhD in renaissance studies; Lightman is a big-time physicist as well with a PhD from Caltech; and Robinson's PhD is in English.

They have doctorates and are also wonderful storytellers.  Their stories are statements on the human condition, which will make us think about the path ahead that we humans need to carefully and consciously tread.

Whether they are anthropologists or physicists, the stories they tell easily and immediately convey the remarkable breadth and depth of their understanding.  When Anam writes about the startup culture, it is more than mere anthropology at work.  Robinson's science fiction is not perhaps what one would expect from an English major.

(I am confident that my old classmate and friend, Vijay, would have easily belonged to this group of PhD writers had he been born in the US, which allows the youth to take the time that they need to tap into their potential.  The India of old, on the other hand, compelled him to make a choice early in his life, which is what he did.)

But, I am not sure if reading fiction is something that people do anymore in huge numbers.  I couldn't get students to get excited even about the short stories that I curated for them in a course that was about understanding the world through short stories.

Quite a few years ago, I noticed on the first day of classes that a female student had the last name of Steinbeck.  As students introduced themselves one after another, when it came to her turn, I remember asking her if she was related to the Steinbeck.  When she excitedly said yes, I asked her if she was asked that question all the time.  Her response shocked me: In her couple of years in college, I was the first one to ever ask that question.  Naturally, I took a couple of minutes to engage the class about Steinbeck, and it was even more depressing that very few had ever read anything at all by Steinbeck.

Now, in retirement, I can read whatever I want like I did before I was laid off.  The only difference is that I now don't have to ever think about whether what I read would be of interest to students.

And I can develop my own lists that mean nothing to other people!

We have digits

A few years ago, Tunku Varadarajan, who used to write for the Wall Street Journal--when it was a respectable publication before it became a Faux-News-wannabe rag pretending to be a newspaper--wrote in a tongue-in-cheek commentary on why Indians love Facebook: "They take to it naturally and with great passion. It allows them to do two things they love: Tell everyone what they are doing; and stick their noses into other people's business."

As one can imagine, Varadarajan's commentary was not well received by Indians. 

But it is not only Indians who tell everyone what they are doing and stick their noses into other people's business.  On Facebook everyone is an Indian.  As a New Yorker cartoon memorably summed up a long time ago during the very early days of the dot.com era, on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog!

It has been years since I deleted my Facebook account after temporarily suspending it.  I don't imagine human behavior having changed for the better in Facebook and Instagram and whatever else that kids and adults alike seem to enjoy.

If anything, the recent years of Twitter have convinced me that human behavior has worsened with social media.  People like the former President knew how to tap into this base human instincts inside us and rose to power.  The rabid humanity is forcing one of my favorite columnists and Twitter pundits, Charles Blow, to withdraw from Twitter.  Blow writes:

Social media is full of hate speech, bots, vitriol, attack armies, screamers and people who live for the opportunity to be angry.

For people like me, that meant half my time on Twitter on any given day could be spent blocking and muting accounts. It’s not because I’m fragile or averse to opposing views, but rather that much of what I was seeing clearly crossed over into hostility and sometimes harassment. I can’t even count the number of racial slurs that have been directed at me, or attacks on my sexuality, or allusions to my family. And, of course, there is the occasional threat of violence.

It is not difficult to imagine what Blow is describing.  In this post in April 2018, I quoted Tristan Harris who said:

Social media was supposed to be about, “Hey, Grandma. How are you?” Now it’s like, “Oh my God, did you see what she wore yesterday? What a fucking cow that bitch is.” Everything is toxic — and that has to do with the internet itself. It was founded to connect people all over the world. But now you can meet people all over the world and then murder them in virtual reality and rape their pets.

Blow has received threats, even to his life.  He writes that by pulling back, he is "slowly returning to me, the person, and away from the persona."

Who are we, and what is social media doing to us humans?

Tish Harrison Warren joins a long list of people who worry about the increasing digitization of life, and wants us to reconnect with material things:

We are made to enjoy the physical presence of other human beings. We are made to enjoy rainstorms or sunshine or walks in the woods. We are made to enjoy touchable things. We cannot escape or overcome this need through technology. Our attempts to do so go against the grain of our deepest human needs and longings.

This gregarious hermit has been living such a life--out of choice, and without any remorse.

Warren adds:

Claims that we can fundamentally alter how human beings have learned, lived and interacted together in essential institutions and activities like education, worship, friendships, dating, communities, work and parenting without large unforeseen social consequences smacks of the hubris and reductionism.

So, what should one do?

We have to be cautious and wise about introducing devices into our lives that fundamentally change how humans have interacted since time immemorial. We have to plunge ourselves primarily into the natural world and embodied human relationships, with all the complexity, challenges, inconvenience and pain that entails.

I hope you will think about that.