So I have thought to trade up some today. Happily, my chance comes on my son Suave's birthday, his thirtieth. You may remember Suave from Standing Firm on Ceremony and A Lonerganian Précis — when he married Dr. Saavy — and from Valentine's Day Music and Space and Transcendence in Bach's Fantasia in G — when he was more musical. Nowadays Suave is a law student.

I'm the one aging now, and he wisely explaining — and agreeably so.

What I've in mind is Suave's LSAT essay, which I found last week on my desk. What luck, I thought — ready to reach for a bottle of Geritol, I have found much better "literary medicine." Though I've read thousands of such essays (but only at the pre-freshman level), to find one at the graduate level is welcome relief indeed.

Here's what Suave faced in a key moment of his twenty-somethingness. What do you think you'd write in reply?

THE PROMPT: From a newsletter about the biology of aging:

Aging is not inevitable. If nothing whatsoever influences the processes of aging, how do we explain the millions of people around the world living longer and healthier extended life spans. Demographers predict that the number of people aged 100 or more will increase fifteen-fold, from approximately 145,000 in 1999 to 2.2 million by 2050. Societies of physicians and scientists endorsing anti-aging technologies now exist throughout the world, but the traditional medical establishment continues to argue that there are no methods proven to stop or reverse aging. This is reminiscent of medical pioneers from the past whose innovations and foresight were trivialized or ignored, only to ultimately become accepted.

SUAVE'S ESSAY:

The argument that "aging is not inevitable" relies on an intriguing yet not fully relevant analogy. While great medical innovations have indeed been accepted only after some delay, those innovations have always concerned specific ailments or conditions, never a process so general and universal as aging. This difference in the scope of the analogized situations is not a minor one, and it proves the critical flaw in the newsletter's argument.

It should first be noted that the predicted numbers of those who will live to or past 100 are wholly irrelevant: the delay of the inevitable is not the removal of its inevitability.

Likewise, the fact that certain scientists and physicians are now endorsing anti-aging technologies carries as much in the current argument as that baldness will soon cease to occur.

The argument, then, rests on the analogy presented, and we see its weakness without difficulty.

The key insight counters the dummy premise that "nothing whatsoever influences the process of aging." The argument correctly suggests that this premise is false: our aging is affected by external and/or internal influences. While some of those influences may, indeed, be overcome by new innovations, the existence of innumerable external and internal influences is inescapable.

Why? Because we must live in the world, and we have bodies.

These two basic truths reveal the differences in scope mentioned above which is the critical flaw in the argument. Medicine may be capable of profound insights and innovations into how to heal ailments and lengthen lives. But it cannot remove us from our world of influences and make unnecessary our bodies, which are its subject.

Therefore, the newsletter is wrong: We must inevitably age.

Clear relief, acceptance, understanding, bald wit, and even stylish insight. Agreed?

So, to all you freshmen, Back to the Future!*

Howard was a fine scholar trained in the German style at Johns Hopkins — writing the nineteenth dissertation in American literature ("of which there are no extant copies," he happily joked). His long career at Northwestern, UCLA, and New Mexico was highlighted by New Mexico's naming a small library for him in 1983. I thought it fitting, since as Moby-Dick readers may recall, "librianship" is a key theme in Melville's novel.

My own work in that service (getting students into the library and weaning a few from the net) is modest enough, but since books are all helpful, getting folks to read, and even beyond that to "think" about literature, is still more so. You may recall my Whose Words These Are I Think I Know, a January 2005 post centered on finding abstraction, figuration, and organization in books. Today I thought to add a fresh take on still more academic work — work stretching over the entire course of the past century.

Howard's biography can help us in defining it — at least at the boundaries.

As I tell students, twentieth-century literary academics fall broadly into three kinds, scholars, critics, and theorists. All have played one-upsmanship games over time, the older looking down on the younger — and vice versa, of course. Though I am quite non-sectarian, in aging I have grown to appreciate the work of the older scholars like Leon Howard.

Here's how he stakes his claim on "critical" study in his brief "Preface":

To those critics who insist that a work of literature makes its most admirable appearance an an independent object of aesthetic experience, I can only suggest that the arts which we call the humanities are, as a matter of fact, unavoidably human. Of them, literature is the most comprehensive and illuminating in its humanity; and, for my part, the knowledge of human beings, in all their complex relationships, which can be gained from literary study is one of the greatest incentives to its pursuit. I cannot, in short, share the apparently widespread feeling that a rereadable book is so delicate a plant that it needs to be removed from its natural environment before it can attract the imagination.

Those perfect adverbial phrases, "as a matter of fact," "for my part," and "in short," catch Howard's concern: some gathered "facts," "personally" acquired, and all "briefly" shown are, indeed, his point. So, naturally, his conclusion ("Recollection and Renown") drives it home more stylishly.

Critics whose impulse has been to worship Art have found in Melville's works a challenge to their ceremonial ingenuity in rationalizing impressions. So satisfactory has been his reflection of their subtleties that typographical errors in cheap editions of his books and mistranscriptions of his difficult handwriting have inspired them to intellectual gyrations of ectasy. The omission of a comma in modern versions of a sentence addressed to Bulkington in Moby Dick has transformed that character from one of Melville's forgotten men into one of his most "significant" heroes. The error which changed a "coiled fish of the sea" into a "soiled fish" in some editions of White Jacket has been the basis for a lyrical tribute to the author's unique genius in imagery. The probable misreading of Melville's original spelling of the word "visible" as a reference to a "usable truth" in a letter to Hawthorne has provoked discourse on the "usable truth" of both men and inspired a meditation on the "usable past."

What more can I say?

Lots, of course, but any real "usable truth" in this "blog post" cannot sustain — even theoretically — a more "usable past" in his book.

And, less so, that in the Leon Howard Memorial Library.

I thought to begin this way since holiday prose is my theme today. You may recall I've dealt with it before in X-Mas-Letter Blues, Two Christmas Letters, in Minor and Major Washington Style, and Epistolary Happy Holidays. Stylish and I recently finished our letter — and Soulful and Smart theirs — studies in contrast that, for fun, I thought to share.

You know my "Keep-It-Simple-Stupid" style — but Soulful's fuller, richer style suggests I might fatten mine.

I mean here's the too lean note I thought to start on:

Season's Greetings from Ourfinetown. With our trips and activities so fun this year, we thought they deserved some modest trumpeting.

What can I say, that it sustained, even in summer, my "summary" refrain?

In late July and August we helped Smart and Soulful with a new roof, Suave working a week in July. With borrowed scaffolding and harnesses, pneumatic nailers and hydraulic equipment, problems seemed even "professionally" solved. At least we had no serious injuries, and if beer was our only pay, family bonding was our bonus.

By way of contrast, now compare Soulful's far more musical

Season's Greetings Form Letter — Installment No. 5


Hello and Happy Holidays from our House(s) to Yours

You may have noted the plural in the above salutation. Yes, it's true — we are still fixing up the fixer-upper, slogging back and forth between two addresses, drill set and paint brush in hand. But we're close. Although close only counts in some cliché that we no longer remember. Not that we remember much of anything due to the off-gassing of various paints, adhesives, and caulks. Off-gassing was our theme for 2006. Soulful employed the term frequently as she embraced her inner granola and researched "green" building products; Smart gave new meaning to the word while "commenting" on said research. Or maybe it's the beans and rice that have fortified our efforts, preserving precious resources that have been used to fund the work. Please join us in singing: Twelve packs of insulation, eleven sheets of drywall, ten gallons of interior latex, nine palets of shingles, eight bottles of Advil, seven counseling sessions, six coils of Romex, five trips to Lowtrope Lumber (in one day), four packs of bamboo flooring, three Velux skylights, two pairs of earplugs, and a gray cat to perch on the window sill.

Makes Styles want to take a big whiff, or bite, of lefse!

Oh, if you've wondered why I've posted so little lately, here's my too-simple answer: analagous office moves, bad rain storms, house repairs, bike farkles, belated Christmas chores, and my Soulfully-Smart, Savvily-Suave, and, I hope, Stylishly-Stylechoice writing.

So to everyone today, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Ironically, this has put me in mind of someone hardly linked with most matters democratic, John Henry Cardinal Newman. Maybe it's what comes from my reflecting on Nancy Pelosi's sudden rise to power — as our first woman and first Italian-American-Catholic soon to live just two heartbeats from the presidency. Hers is a sensibility, you might agree, very different from that of the man occupying the office. In any event, I thought to share a passage apt to an understanding of a possible reason fit to that development. Though I doubt Cardinal Newman ever quite anticipated my particular take on his point, its delineation awaits some lines from his eloquently-styled sermon, "Implicit and Explicit Reason" (1887):

The mind ranges to and fro, and spreads out and advances forward with a quickness which has become a proverb, and a subtlety and versatility which baffle investigation. It passes on from point to point, gaining one by some indication; another by probability; then availing itself of an association; then falling back upon some received law; next seizing on some inward instinct, or some obscure memory; and thus it makes progress not unlike a clamberer on a steep cliff, who, by quick eye, prompt hand, and firm foot, ascends, how, he knows not how himself, by personal endowments and by practice, rather than by rule, leaving no track behind him, and unable to teach another. It is not too much to say that the stepping by which great geniuses scale the mountain of truth is as unsafe and precarious to men in general as the ascent of a skillful mountaineer up a literal crag. It is a way which they alone can take; and its justification lies alone in their success. And such mainly is the way in which all men, gifted or not gifted, commonly reason — not by rule, but by an inward faculty. Reasoning, then, or the exercise of reason, is a living, spontaneous energy within us, not an art.

The point here lies, I think, in Newman's conclusion. Though we all admire his own skillful climb up the "mountain of truth" (seeing him as the storied "genius" of the ascent), it's rather his implicit nod to all men ("gifted or not") that signals a wider aim. We may think of it as his glimpsed vision of what we might call "distributed intelligence" — those indications, probabilities, associations, received laws, instincts, and memories mostly constituting our thinking. Since they belong to men and women alike, it's reason of Newman's "implicit" kind — whether in the voting booth or on the battle field — that I think we all counted last Tuesday.

It comes to us now, of course, chiefly to act on.

Steve H. is something of a classic "Man in the Street." At fifty-one, he tells us, he's "been around the block a few times." With twenty-nine years in the metal trades (he's been a machinist, welder, and millwright locally), lately he's been studying for work in habitat restoration. English 101 was a degree requirement, and, as you will see, he earned himself an "A."

For years I've had an assignment in class meant to promote wise reflection on "The Art of Writing." You can read my take on it at Community College English in a short post I wrote called One Helpful Portfolio Cover. But what matters here is Steve's approach, which you have (slightly revised) by permission. It's happily entitled

Integrity vs. Ambiguity: Ethics and the Art of Writing

I left the eight parts of speech behind me thirty-three years ago, though not the imprint they left on my memory. I have always enjoyed quality fiction and non-fiction, but I never understood what separated good writing from bad — save for my difficulty in reading some piece or my inability to attend to it without keeling over from boredom.

Surprisingly, I was good in high school at diagramming sentences and naming their parts (nouns, pronouns, verbs), but I never in fact asked anyone, "What was the purpose?" Now with the understanding that comes from hindsight and having been around the block a few times, I more clearly see the purpose. You must eventually analyze even your own writing to examine subtle relationships among the words. Then you will understand better how to put your thoughts together, tying one to another in good order and learning to communicate clear ideas, beliefs, and feelings.

I believe no one starts out wanting to be the village idiot, for stiff competition alone should prevent us all from ever applying for the job. I also believe in order to be a responsible citizen, you should be able to discern quickly when someone is trying "to pull the wool over your eyes," especially someone from the government.

Among the hardest concepts to master when learning how to write well is what I call "racing the chariot of Aristotle's three steeds of writing" — called ethos, pathos, and logos — the "horses" better known as ethics, emotions, and logic. For someone like me, my ethics seem to make me crack the whip mostly over my emotions — "damn the logic, full speed ahead," I say. This might be acceptable for some B-grade Hollywood movie, but it doesn't work as well in a world where we are all judged by our ability to manage the three — morals, passion, and thought — to achieve real goals.

When this balance is sacrificed for the purpose, say, of deliberately trying to hide our intent within our writing, we set aside proper ethics for personal gain and take up the sword of ambiguity and obscurity to find, as a general rule, something else. Exclusive language, double speak, bureaucratese, and a host of other evasive writing "skills" become a smoke screen behind which we sneak past the guards of moral high ground toward our dark aim.

Of course, there is the old adage "live by the sword, die by the sword," but it never occurs to us we may be the ones to fall under the overwhelming blows of truth.

Being the practical person that I am, one learning from seeing, feeling, and doing, I find it easier to show than tell. The following is the record, as I remember it, of an actual event where the outcome was a direct result of a person's deliberately putting up a "smoke screen" to cover his own dark maneuverings — proof of what happens when you abandon ethics, clarity and integrity for blind ego and ambition.

Now enter our last Aristotelian term

TRAGOS — Definition: A Tragedy

I was employed on Smart and Soulful's roof in July and August. Though consumed only at day's end, cheap beer was my pay, and hearing loss my pain. We had powerful, pneumatic tools and much fun shooting compressed breezes through our nail guns. I suppose you could say — evoking an old theme — that summer labor has knocked some palaver out of my writing.

But, boy, am I glad to be back teaching.

Which leads me to a quote, one from Isaiah — as in my Pro Deo et Patria: Father-Called, Father-Sent:

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens — wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

I still admit I'm hard of hearing, but I try to remember, too, what it means to listen.

But we were mindful, too, of less happy families. For Tony, a U. S. Navy Lieutenant, and his wife Natalie — with their children Gabrielle, Hayden, and Hudson — are soon facing a sad separation. Dressed Sunday in his parade whites, Tony is being sent to Iraq Wednesday.

I can't begin to describe the service, which honored members graduating and others leaving for building work in Mexico, but pastor's words for Sunday were profound: "transition" and "confidence." What struck me more, however — since Tony had ended his talk to us by saying, "Here I am" — came in a bible reading of some weeks before from the prophet Isaiah,

¹In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of His robe filled the Temple. ²Seraphs stood in attendance on Him. Each of them had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his legs, and with two he would fly.

³And one would call to the other
"Holy, holy, holy!
The Lord of Hosts!
His presence fills all the earth!"

⁴The doorposts would shake at the sound of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke. ⁵I cried,

"Woe is me; I am lost!
For I am a man of unclean lips
And I live among a people
Of unclean lips;
Yet my own eyes have beheld
The King LORD of Hosts."

⁶Then one of the seraphs flew over to me with a live coal, which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. ⁷He touched it to my lips and declared,

"Now that this has touched your lips,
Your guilt shall depart
and your sin be purged away."

⁸Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me."

You'll appreciate that Tony stressed that, regardless of our views on Iraq, our larger duties to God and country transcend personal, merely private claims. It is good we remember that, while we pray for fathers everywhere separated by the sad scourge of war.

This happened to a portion of my philosophy class recently. A wise administrator gave my class permission to do a short field trip there, and a good choice it was, for as we left I heard my students agree: "Best field trip ever." That is maybe heartening news today with so many plugged into their I-Pods, for books are in some ways, still, "equally technological."

Jack Goody once famously said "Literacy is the technology of intellect" — a wise judgment partly stemming from the old Baconian saw that "Reading maketh a full man." You may perhaps recall Francis Bacon's essay

Of Studies


STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores [Studies pass into and influence manners]. Nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the Schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores [splitters of hairs]. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

Happily, as we left I noticed no real defect of mind in my own students. For over a meal later in another Portland landmark — The Old Spaghetti Factory — I overheard a pair debating the fate of World Federation Wrestling under Vince McMahon. Though I was about to mention Roland Barthes' great essay on professional wrestling, in Mythologies, I desisted, with some apt Baconian principles perhaps partly in view. Sometimes heated participation in the ring does beat cold theory in print.

Besides, I'd induced one of them to buy a book to supplement his favored music major, Frank Conroy's Body and Soul. For the human arts are, all — don't you think? — really of a piece.

My FirST Imperative: GO RIDE!

The TSA guy at SEA-TAC hadn't heard the command as he eyed my gear, likely thinking "terrorist." I assured him I wasn't. My Washington license plate maybe helped: "Ok, off to Denver."

Three days later (with 1689 ground miles behind me) I'd in fact done the deal. I'd taken possession of my new bike. When buying it in February online, I'd stored it in Berthoud with a relative whose son was playing the organ May 5 in Fort Collins, CO. Perfect. "The King of Instruments" meets Honda's ST1100. My attachments just hint at bigger sounds.

My ride? Preaching to the assembled ST choir, divine: 713 miles on my first day (semi-circling Teton NP en route to Bozeman), 563 on my second (to Douglas, WA), and 413 on my third (home). If you've avoided DH1 through North Cascades NP, I suggest a sunny-snowy, copless, twisty Monday in May.

My first impressions? Well, this Honda is fast, smooth, and deceptively quiet — with character aplenty.

I'm also quite happy to be aboard, lurking here no more.

I then answered to a thread called

what do u do for work?

Non-Invasive Brain Surgery

I've spent thirty-five years teaching college . . . philosophy and English.

I think; therefore I ride.

To which a rider aptly named Bones replied:

Cogito ergo zoom.

And I, in Cartesian French,

Touché!

Fun, huh?

I'm seeking "pastures in another lattitude" tomorrow, like those quadrupeds noted in The Volatile Truth of Our Words, since I'm tiring of Texas here. I'm longing for something more bracing, more adventuresome, more inspiring. Alhough I "Don't know when I'll be back again," in my next post I'll be noting brighter sights and sounds — with Colorado as but a prelude. I'll be adding Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington, too.

Cheerio!

As a logger, charged recently with dodging the literal residue of certain Texas longhorns, I thought to clarify my stance. In his "Conclusion," Thoreau properly marks the problem with exquisite delicacy, in a very stylish passage my readers may well appreciate:

It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make [Thoreau writes] that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so. As if that were important, and there were not enough to understand you without them. As if Nature could support but one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, and hush and whoa, which Bright [an Ox] can understand, were the best English.

You who've read Texas-Style Bovine Epistemology might now appreciate Thoreau's larger point. What with "cows" and "bulls" running about, it's only natural, I suppose, that the upshot of the matter is this:

As if there were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression [Thoreau continues] may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! it depends on how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time.

So let us all repeat now, even Barbara Bush, extra-vagantly enough!

"The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement."

Is not Thoreau's "cow" at least an example of one "Mission Accomplished"?

Ironically, Texas teaching framed our trip from first to last. Initially passing through some dairyland enroute to SEA-TAC, we got word of Barbara Bush's plans to donate — through her son Neil's IgniteLearning company in Austin — COWs (Curricula on Wheels) to Houston's Independent School District. You may have seen the story. Meant partly for Katrina victims, the family largesse looks suspiciously like a clever tax gimmick — and it may just smack of Bushism, too (corporate cronyism).

We didn't reflect on it more till, visiting later in Texas's Bob Bullock State History Museum, we saw in Austin a COW being rolled in for public presentation. Well, you can imagine our surprise: that the thing (pictured at right) was being brazenly displayed in public suggested a better teaching tool I can show a bit more modestly in print — Bill Perry's famous 1963 essay, "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts." I thought to define its two essentials.

Perry himself calls his piece a study in "Educational Epistemology," turning on the bovine concepts of "cow" and "bull." Here are Perry's definitions:

Cow (pure): data, however relevant, without relevancies.

Bull (pure): relevancies, however relevant, without data.

And again:

To cow (v. intrans.) or the act of cowing:
To list data (or perform operations) without awareness of, or comment upon, the contexts, frames of reference, or points of observation which determine the origin, nature, and meaning of the data (or procedures). To write on the assumption that "a fact is a fact." To present evidence of hard work as a substitute for understanding, without any intent to deceive.

To bull (v. intrans.) or the act of bulling:
To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any. To present evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the reader may be deceived into supposing a familiarity with content.

Today, reflecting on the clan's claims to leadership, I'm wondering if, in public as well as private, the Bushes have somehow got "cow" and "bull" together in a way better recognized, rather more neutrally, as "The Bum Steer."

In any event, to the Georges, Neil, Jeb, and, of course, Barbara, here's my slightly more literal, semi-pictorial version.

So what am I to make of this "one-step-forward, two-step-back" season? Seeing as T. S. Eliot says "April is the cruelest month," only A. R. Ammons's

Eyesight



    It was May before my

attention came

to spring and

my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've

missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:

don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if

you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain

it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone

I know here that June will always go with spring. Summer, anyone?

   To the Trope Topic College Scholarship Committee:

Jason Artful has asked for a recommendation supporting his TTC scholarship application. As his teacher in English 101 last fall, I can happily comply. Jason is a very deserving applicant.

Jason combines good sense with personal integrity and, vocationally, very impressive artistic talent. I have just finished reviewing a shared set of CD images that, like three essays I still possess, affirm the conclusion that he works skillfully. In everything, he succeeds, and I would consider his work still more broadly competitive. For I trust he will transfer one day, and with the pride he now takes in OHS carry on our fine traditions at TTC to bigger and better things. I know he has designs on such, already now partly fulfilled in his recent promotion at Starbucks — with whom he wishes to continue working one day in the design department. Goal-setting, I tell my students, is the real deal, and Jason truly is its exemplar.

He is also an exemplar of the steady application of head and heart to class work. His first essays initially fell short of that task in 101, but without batting an eye — and sitting always up front — he learned his lessons, applying himself and coming away, as he wrote in a final bluebook essay, as "a simple, complete, and focused writer." I wish more students would do the same.

In any event, he deserves everything TTC can give him, and your committee clearly has a fair share to offer. I trust Jason won't misspend it.

                                        Yours sincerely,

                                            Styles Stylechoice
                                            Philosophy/English
                                            Humanities Division

Jason thought that might do the trick, and I concurred. Some few letters do just write themselves. Prompted here by his own well-formed self, Jason's is but a brief, quite colorful, artfully "stylish" example.

Take, for instance, my This — By Accident — July 4th (wherein you may recall my concluding summer shed-cleaning tasks).

I thought today to revive their warm memory by turning things over to someone with much sharper language skills, William Shakespeare. Who better, in English, to ventriloquize — on this St. Valentine's Day — rhetorical things sufficiently "demonstrative"?

        Shakespeare's Sonnet LV

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
   Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
   But you shall shine more bright in these contents
   Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
   When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
   And broils root out the work of masonry,
   Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
   The living record of your memory.
   'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
   Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
   Even in the eyes of all posterity
   That wear this world out to the ending doom.
     So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
     You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

Tomorrow I just might, of course, be turning things over to more wintry chores — like log splitting.

They go, too, with still more stylish poetic tasks — themselves undemonstrative in "Norwegian-style."