I just noticed today that the post on 'Kim's Game' had been left incomplete, and terminated abruptly in the middle of a sentence. I fixed this.
Gene Sprechini, 1952--2023, was one of my closest friends. He died last week, after a painful illness. He leaves behind a wonderful family: a loving and beautiful wife, at least two sisters, and brothers, and nephews and nieces, and a score of grateful and adoring friends and students.
Before I was hired at Lycoming College, in Williamsport Pennsylvania, I had come up for an interview, and met some of the faculty. My daughter (who was just six) was pleased with the place, because--as she said--"They have a mall!!" (The mall is now in extreme decline, and has been bought by a real estate developer. Where would we be without them?) As we were preparing to leave, the chair of the department was talking to me, and was saying he wished that we could stay longer. I asked why. Because, he said, there was a colleague he wanted me to meet, namely a new hire from the previous year, called Gene Sprechini, who had gone out of town for some reason--meet with his advisor, or for a family event. I wondered what could be so important about meeting someone, since I had met the most senior faculty already. It wasn't until a year or so after I had been teaching here that I got to know Gene, because his area was statistics, and my area was analysis (OK, calculus, and that sort of thing), and I had been stashed on the third floor with the English department, while Gene was on the first floor with all the other math guys--there were only guys in our department back then.
When I returned the following year, Gene helped me find a place to stay, my temporary home having been reclaimed by the music professor who had let us stay for a year while he was on sabbatical. It was in those days that I discovered how funny Gene was. In addition, he was intimately knowledgeable about all matters having to do with popular culture of the fifties, sixties and seventies: TV, radio, most of which I had gotten familiar with through reruns. Shortly after, while I was getting my feet wet teaching nurses computer science (don't ask), it became necessary for Gene to take up some analysis, such as Calculus 2, and Calculus 3. There must have been some complaints about my teaching these courses; in retrospect, I was probably being too hard on our students.
Once Gene moved into teaching calculus, he wanted to bounce some of his ideas off me, and we got very close. Then he took up the chairmanship, and he could take a greater control over what he taught, and soon we were making changes in the middle-level curriculum, to bring it in line with the degree of difficulty that was tolerable to our students. Gradually, all of us in the department were teaching a huge variety of courses, for various reasons, and I got the impression that most of us were happy, eventually, with our course-loads.
Gene was a wonderful guy, loved alike by faculty and students. I don't have an insight for why, but he just was. He was the one to whom anyone would go if there was a problem, and he would discover a creative solution to it. The faculty in our department were probably the most creative problem-solvers in the nation, and I hope our graduates realize just how lucky they are to have known Gene, and David, and Charlie, and Eileen; and Chris and Jason, and Andrew. Some of our beloved faculty have left: Ed Wallace, Melissa Sutherland, and Joanne Schweinsberg.
Gene's passing is a huge blow to many; he was a great resource for the school, and for many of his colleagues, and certainly for his students. His departure, more than the departure of anyone else, be it through retirement or through death, is likely to change the nature of the school itself, and certainly the nature of the mathematics major; and the school will have to work very hard to recover. It has managed to bounce back from the loss of Charlie Getchell, and David Haley, and it will bounce back from this loss. But it will be painful.
Arch
[Updated today, 2023/06/2.]
Presently we have two dogs: a 90-pound 'boxador', a boxer crossed with a Chocolate Lab; and a 30-pound sort of terrier mutt. The larger dog is a perfect gentleman: he doesn't go through any doors until he has been given an explicit invitation. The smaller dog does what he pretty well pleases. This report is about the smaller dog, a sort of canine hooligan.
They both unfortunately beg at the dining table. We're not sure who introduced them to the concept, but at every meal, there they are, looking as though they haven't eaten for months. Once we've taken our empty plates to the sink, the larger dog may look sadly at whatever is still in the dishes on the table. The smaller dog gets up on his hindlegs, and strains towards the dishes. If one of them is within his reach, I would guess that he would drag it off the table and have his way with it.
The older dog, now about 12 years old, is prone to urinary accidents, so we urge him to go out and do his business every few hours. The little rascal is happy to fly out with his bigger comrade, but he goes to the back gates and barks. He barks at everything: people walking by, a dog in a yard a quarter mile away, passing cars, the dog next door, and even stationary, inanimate objects, like cars, or the house across the street. The older boy rarely ever barks. But if junior barks in a particularly urgent way, he is tricked into joining him in a bark.
I get the impression that their eyesight is not very good. But nor is their hearing fantastic. My stepson has a pickup to whose engine sound they are particularly attuned. Even before he's turned into our alley on his way back from some errand, they're seated at the back door, tails wagging. At least, they used to; nowadays, they get excited even if another pickup goes along the street. Conclusion: their discrimination of sounds is getting worse.
We used to take them, at one time, to this nice local park, located in a little island, where they could run around off their leashes, chasing imaginary rabbits and squirrels. But as their barking hobby has grown in importance, we're not inclined to make the effort to take them out; all it will do is make a public nuisance for everyone who lives in the vicinity of that park. The senior (larger) dog is not a huge problem, but the little one most definitely is. Mind you, he is really, really cute, and we often can't resist letting him do what he wants. But our civic responsibility comes first, and we find ourselves depriving both dogs from having much fun.
Arch
[I will provide links for these that point to recordings on YouTube later; I'm writing this on my phone, which isn't 'smart' enough to make it easy to paste URLs.]
The first is the finale of Bach's A minor solo violin concerto, BWV 1041. This is a lovely piece of music, which is a favorite of violinists; all of its movements are at least excellent. I heard the final movement recently, on the radio or somewhere, and now I'm obsessed with it! It is sort of a jig, though it is in (compound) triple time. I think other finales in Bach are also in compound triple time, though I could be wrong. Some years ago, I bought a record of a couple of Bach violin concertos played by Viktoria Mullova, who was a Russian violinist touring Europe with her own little string ensemble at that time. Now she is settled somewhere in Europe, and was married to a prominent conductor, until he died. She was a pioneer of the 'One instrument per part' movement of the late Eighties and Nineties, and which is the dominant paradigm now.
Another favorite of mine, of which I have been reminded recently, is the Dance of the Cygnets (or ducklings) from Swan Lake, by Tchaikovsky. If you ever saw it danced, with four dancers with linked arms, it is an unforgettable sight, and the music will remind you of it every time! My Dad got us a Little Golden Record of it when I was just about 5 or 6 (which was a very long time ago), and at that time I had seen no ballets at all, but I loved the music anyway! The instrumentation is mostly woodwinds, with the double-reeds prominent (oboes and bassoons). The strings enter in the middle section, with flutes adding a little shine.
Back to Bach for the next one: the opening chorus of the Cantata "What God has done is rightly done," BWV 26. This piece was transcribed by William Walton for his ballet The Wise Virgins, where he orchestrates it far more richly. Just as in the finale I described at the top, this piece also has a wonderful bass line that dances all by itself! In the clips available on YouTube, if you watch the cellists and the double-bassist (usually only one), you see them practically dancing with their instruments.
Finally, a Waltz in C Sharp minor, by Chopin. I don't know the opus numbers of the little Chopin I'm familiar with, so I'll have to make clear which Valse I mean by providing a link later. (This is how Art Linkletter got his name.)
A lot of the time, I found myself teaching topics I loved, to a mix of (1) students who did not want to learn the stuff---or did not want to have it presented the way I was presenting it, and (2) students who were happy with the material, and mostly OK with the presentation. Some of the time I tried to 'sell' the material to the entire class; some of the time I focused on those who were enjoying the lesson, basically writing off the dissatisfied ones.
I tried to be creative with the exams I gave; I made sure that they believed that I wanted to know what they knew, as opposed to what they didn't know. I worked hard to make sure that all of them could answer a core of questions correctly, so that I did not have to grade out of, say, 40 points, and then add sixty to their score! (There are teachers who do that.). I think this was the most creative contribution I made for all my years of teaching---it shows just how much testing was emphasized in my classrooms, in contrast to the present-day departure from that philosophy. But in my book, taking an interesting test is a learning experience.
One course that I enjoyed teaching---for the most part---with every sort of student, people who hated the subject, and those who loved it, was Geometry. Only students who were pre-service (going into the teaching profession) were expected to take this course, but word got around that it was an easy course, and other sorts of (non-teacher) types got onto my roster, and I let them, hoping they would learn to love mathematics. You might not expect this, but I was weak in what we call synthetic geometry, which is building up geometric proofs by constructing additional lines and circles, in contrast to analytical geometry, which I had concentrated on; in fact, everyone I had graduated from high school with did geometry that way, where you calculate properties using Cartesian coordinates. So we were all discovering the logical structure of geometry together, in the early years of my teaching.
So, to summarize: with a topic that I liked, with eager students, and where I had some latitude regarding the curriculum, I was in heaven. In all other cases, teaching was somewhat of a chore.
Arch.
Recently, on Facebook, someone remembered Anne Frank, and how she affected some, and right away, others were quick to criticize those who chose either side of the discussion.
I read A. F.'s diary long ago, and I can't remember most of what she wrote. But what really grabbed me were the photos of her, and that brilliant smile. Some FB posters were saying that mankind had failed to learn from her story, and others contradicted them, and on and on, and I didn't read closely what people had written. I'm not under the impression that I'm too wise to read these posts, but it seemed to me that there was very little to hate about Anne Frank, but there seemed to be no scarcity of those who were unhappy with Anne Frank for one reason or another.
I don't know why anyone would hate anyone, though living in the US, encountering haters of the despised Yankees (Americans, not the athletes) was not uncommon. But being critical or annoyed with a group is different from hating their guts, isn't it? There are groups that I intensely dislike, I must confess; if pressed I will reveal who they are. But I'm seeing people who hate people of certain other categories with overwhelming passion. The Jews. The Russians. The Ukrainians. The Mexicans. The Catholics. The Palestinians. The Blacks. Whites. Politicians ... Now wait; I don't like career politicians, either; they seem to be 'in it to win it' to a pathological degree.
All this hate is tiring, and I have to take a nap ...
One of the hardest things for anyone who does not believe in an afterlife, is to console someone who is bereaved. What are we to tell them?
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God has called your loved one, to be with him?
He's in a better place now?
We'll all meet together in some happy place someday?
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The best we can do is to listen to them; identify with their grief, and suffer with them; show them our love for them; offer to help with their duties, if possible. Recently bereaved find relief in talking about the dead one, so listening is important. But other than helping in practical ways, I wouldn't know where to go to get spiritual help.
There have been atheists among us for millennia. Many of our greatest thinkers have been closet atheists. But when they meditated upon death, they often used Christian--or theistic, anyway-- imagery: an immortal soul, and a hall of heroes.
