I'm delinquent in my blogging and probably have very little to say this time around.  I'm in the process of dealing with moving aging parents into a care facility, resolving a drainage issue in my yard and trying to get income taxes completed on time.  But, as my wife always says, I'm not complaining, just describing.

I promise more later this week.

For those faithful who read this blog for their trivia fix, here are three new puzzlers.

Literature:  It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. 

Movie:  Bob: Wha - why is there tape on your nose? 
            Dignan: Exactly!

Music:  Our families can't agree
            I'm your brother's sworn enemy
            But I'll shout out my love to the stars

Last Week's Answers

Literature: Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Movie: Casablanca

Music: "See the World" by Gomez

Ireland in the spring is, as one might expect, blustery and rainy.  That said, it was still a beautiful place to visit and a great way to spend my Spring Break.  England, too, was a bit on the chilly side, but it was wonderful to return to Canterbury to see old friends and walk around the city again.  The two days we spent there went by all too quickly. 

My purpose in going to Carlow and Canterbury was three-fold: to see my wife and daughter, to see and enjoy the places, and, finally, to visit with students who are studying there.  As I wrote about a few weeks ago, convincing students that a semester abroad is an unparalleled opportunity for personal growth has become a passion of mine, so I wanted to talk with ECC students Brandy Parke and Mary Mikula to see how they were doing now that their time in Canterbury was nearly finished, and I wanted to talk with the students in Carlow, Ireland, about their experiences in the newest offering through the community college consortium that sponsors these semester programs.  To a person, the comments were exuberant and positive.  Even for those who had been acutely homesick at the beginning—which is the norm—it has become a highlight in their lives. 

What I was especially pleased to see—as I had been when we accompanied the students in 2007—was how independent and confident they had become.  Brandy and Mary were heading out the day after we left for a weeklong tour of Europe, starting in Amsterdam and ending in Rome.  My daughter and her friends were also off to Rome, with a side trip to Pisa.  Others were touring Ireland, while another group was headed to Spain.  And a number of these students had never been out of the country—some had never been out of Illinois—before this.

So, again, please consider a semester abroad.  I guarantee you will have the time of your life and will come back a completely changed person.  It is not too late for the fall term, and in the spring of 2010,  Marta Walz, ECC speech teacher, will be the faculty member going with the group to Carlow.  She is , understandably, very excited about it and will be a great mentor.

Please let me know if you want more information or contact Lauren Nehlsen.

Here's another round of trivia questions--thematic this time--for those who are so inclined:

Literature

What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea--to discover a great thought.

Music

Day to day
Where do you want to be?
'Cos now you're trying to pick a fight
With everyone you need

Movie

 We'll always have Paris.

Answers for the last round are:

Literature: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Movie: Apocalypse Now (which is based on Heart of Darkness)

Music: (Nothing But) Flowers by the Talking Heads

Competition is fierce and close right now, but it's still not too late to join in.

I had grand plans to write something of substance this week, but midterm tests, papers and grading got in the way.  And now, today, I am getting ready for a trip to Ireland and England and am short on time.  So, when I get back, I'll not only have a blog of substance, but I should also have vlog material, meaning you will be able to see "How I Spent My Spring Break."

For the trivia contestants, here's this week's installment

Literature

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."

Movie

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Music

The highways and cars

Were sacrificed for agriculture

I thought that we'd start over

But I guess I was wrong

Last week's answers:

Literature: Moby Dick

Movie: Babe

Music: "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles

Like Bruce Banner, mild-mannered and unassuming, I, too, carry around inside me an alter ego who remains unseen and in check unless something triggers the rage that unleashes the beast.  But my other self is not a big green monster with a bad haircut.  No, when I am pushed beyond the limits, my clothes don’t split open as my muscles bulge.  What happens to me is that I become more stooped, my hair grows wispy as my hairline recedes, my eyesight goes so I have to squint, my pants climb up to mid-chest and my voice crackles with anger.  I have become Cranky Man, and you’d better watch out.

Usually, I am able to control my emotions, so Cranky Man is rarely seen in public, and, until last week, he had not shown himself since last fall.  In that instance, the cause was a broken washing machine purchased from a large retailer we’ll call Gears and Flowbuck.  In this case, the part that was broken was covered by warranty, but the technician who came to check the machine would not simply replace the part because there’s no money in that.  Instead, he wanted to replace, for an additional $900, a perfectly fine part behind the broken one.  When I asked him if I could just have the part I needed—the stainless steel drum on a front-loading machine—he said he couldn’t do it, so I asked for a phone number of someone who might approve it, and he reluctantly handed it over.

And this is where the rage begins to build.  For six hours over the next two days, I was on the phone with a host of nincompoops and incompetent boobs, all of whom were trained in the art of deflection and misdirection.  In a half-dozen cases, my call was mysteriously dropped when I got close to finding a sympathetic, non-nincompoop.  In others, I was lied to.  In still other calls, I went round and round an electronic loop.  Finally, in the sixth hour, Cranky Man appeared in an explosion of spittle and epithets, holding the man at the other end of the line by the virtual throat and rasping at him dangerously, “Give me my drum!  Give me my drum!  It’s mine, and I want it!”  Fully aware of the threat I posed, he told me that he would make some calls and get back to me.  When he hung up, I figured that was it.  Cranky Man had given it his best shot, but, ultimately, he never wins.

Imagine, then, my surprise when, two days later, I came home to find not one stainless steel washing machine drum in front of my garage door, but two stainless steel washing machine drums!  

So that was last fall and, despite the litany of woes I chronicled in my first blog this semester, Cranky Man remained tucked away.  But then last Friday, he re-emerged ever so briefly.  This time it wasn’t a large retailer that forced him out.  It was a large communications company that we’ll call

BT&T. 

Having succumbed to the sales pitch last fall of a bumbling young salesman (whose very sales shtick may have been his apparent bumbling), we agreed to change our cable/internet provider to the aforementioned BT&T and arranged for installation of the equipment on March 6, between 8-10 a.m.  To accommodate the installer, I cancelled some appointments and waited for him to appear.  By 10:30, when no one had shown up, I called the company to see what had happened.   As with most stories of this kind, I found myself bounced around “If you want to continue in English, press one” limbo until a rather sleepy-sounding individual told me that the installation order had been cancelled. 

“Cancelled?” I croaked,  “I didn’t cancel.”  At which point, I was tossed back into the mix of desperate people listening to electronic dance music and being told how valuable we are as customer.  When I finally spoke with a person who seemed to know what she was doing, I was told that the installer had gone to the address and found an abandoned house with no electricity.

“Really?”  By now I was in full CM mode. “I’m standing in my house, flipping my lights off and on!” 

After apologizing for the error, the woman told me that a new order would have to be written and that the soonest I could get hooked up was April.  I told her I was no longer interested and hung up.  It wasn’t later that it dawned on me: BT&T is a phone company.  Why didn’t the installer use his phone and call me?

So it goes, I guess.

Trivia Contest #3

So far, Nick Kotwas is still our leader, but he’s being pursued by Olivia Happel and Amybeth Maurer.  Here are this week’s questions.  And don’t forget: you can’t win, if you don’t play.

Literature

“From hell’s heart, I stabbeth ye!”

Movie

That’ll do, pig.

Music

I once had a girl,

Or, should I say, she once had me.

She showed me her room.

Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood.

Last Week's Answers:

Literature: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Movie: Cool Hand Luke

Music: "Babylon" by David Gray

For Spring Break this year, I’m going to Ireland and England.  I know these are probably not high on the list for college students who are looking for a warm place with beaches—especially after this winter, but I’m going to join my wife and daughter who are on a study abroad program in Carlow, Ireland, and then on to Canterbury, England, to visit two ECC students—Brandy Parke and Mary Mikula—who are studying there for the semester.  I’m also going because I’m nostalgic.

In the fall of 2007, my wife and I accompanied a group of 13 community college students from Illinois and Wisconsin to Canterbury where we joined the academic community at Canterbury Christ Church University.  In all honesty, those three months were among the best of my life and of my career—thus the nostalgia.  Settling into a place, meeting the neighbors, going shopping and doing laundry, getting a library card: all of trappings of a normal life made us feel more like residents than visitors.   The students who went with us, I know, felt the same way because they were part of the student body and were welcomed by students from England, as well as those who were attending from other parts of the world.

I bring up this experience not so much as a stroll down memory lane but as an invitation to all of you ECC students who might never have considered a study abroad program while attending a community college (and those of you who have, too, of course).  Most students think that a study abroad program comes at the end of a college career, but the opportunities you have through ECC are equal to, if not better than, those you’d find at a four-year institution.  Through the Illinois Consortium for International Studies and Programs (ICISP), you could spend a semester in England or Ireland, Austria, Spain, China, Australia, Costa Rica or Mexico.  And work has already begun on programs in Puerto Rico and India.  In addition to the variety of choices made available through the consortium, there are a couple of very strong reasons to consider going overseas now rather than waiting until later.

First of all, the cost is less.  Sure, you’ll pay more for a semester in, say, Ireland than you would here, but, then again, you get to be in Ireland.  At a four-year school, on the other hand, you will end up paying more for the same program (at Carlow, for example, students from St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa, are paying more than their Illinois community college counterparts for an identical experience) because the costs at a four-year school are higher.  Secondly, every course you take will transfer back and can, with a little planning, help you meet your general education requirements and stay on track to graduate.  If you wait until you are a junior or senior, you are, in all likelihood, adding a semester to your schooling because you will be interrupting studies in your major field for the overseas experience. 

If you have any interest in exploring this further, send me an email or stop by my office, SRC 344.  If you need more information—which you will—than I can provide, then I’ll point you in the direction of Lauren Nehlsen, ECC’s director of International Student Services; she’s the expert.  I’m just the enthusiast.

Please do consider it.  Your life will be changed for the better.

Trivia Contest Week 2

There were only two people who guessed at last week’s questions—Nicholas Kotwas, who had two right answers, and Amybeth Maurer, who got one right, but I’m hopeful that this week there will be more.  I think maybe I started off with some toughies.  I’ll take it a little easier this week. 

Please send your answers to me via email: pparks@elgin.edu.

Here you go, and good luck:

Literature

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Movie

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Song

Friday night I’m going nowhere

All the lights are changing green to red

Turning over TV stations

Situations running through my head

Last week's answers:

Literature: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (one of the great novels of the 20^th century)

Movie: Raising Arizona (one of many great movies by the Coen Brothers)

Song: “Third Planet” by Modest Mouse (written by Isaac Brock, a remarkable lyricist)

Remember: There's a valuable prize at the end of the semester for the winner

Every Tuesday night, with rare exception, I spend two hours locked in intellectual battle (sort of) with other like-minded folk all trying to recall the first “real” President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, which landmass would be the first you would cross if you headed west from the tip of South America, and all twelve names of the Tribes of Israel (hint: Okra is not one of them).  These two-hour brain tussles are commonly referred to as trivia contests, but to those of us who are regulars, they are anything but trivial.  For most of us who go every week—our quizzes are hosted in the upper room at McNally’s Pub in St. Charles, but there are others in the area—the evenings are not so much about who wins, though that is always an added bonus, as it is spending time with a group of good people and leaving the place a little smarter than when we got there. 

If a quiz is well-written, it will cover a wide range of topics so that everyone will be able to come up with an answer before the night is through.  Teams that are successful tend to be made up of people with different knowledge sets or backgrounds or, more importantly than one would imagine, different age groups.  For example, I play with my son, who is a popular culture expert, and two other younger guys—one who teaches math and knows sports, and the other who has a wide range of interests and reads a lot—so we are able to complement each other  pretty well. 

In addition to the weekly contests, I’ve had a chance to participate annually in one or two of the Literacy Volunteers Trivia Bees with ECC colleagues.  These, too, are set up to require a broad base of knowledge among team members and are equally enjoyable activities.  On campus, Phi Theta Kappa had a trivia contest as part of the agenda when our chapter hosted a regional conference a few years ago.

So, what’s the point to this blog?  Well, to encourage you all to keep your brains sharp by finding and participating in trivia contests rather than spending an evening alone at a compute keyboard(a recent study suggests that Facebook and other online social networking is going to “infantilize” the brains of those who spend two much time there, so beware).  And secondly, to invite you to take part in a trivia contest I’m throwing right here every week.  Starting today and appearing every Thursday, I’ll have a quote from a movie, a line from a piece of literature, and a song lyric for you to identify by title.  Send your answers to me via email (pparks@elgin.edu) rather than as a comment, which everyone can read,  and you don’t want to give away the answers because, at the end of the semester, the winner will receive a valuable prize!

That said, here are this week’s items.  Identify them in order by title only:

Movie: 

Character One: (about the balloons he just bought) These blow up into funny shapes and all?

Character Two:  Well no...unless round is funny.          

Literature: 

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Song:

The universe is shaped exactly like the earth.                                                                If you go straight long enough, you'll end up where you were.

The answers will be provided next week when a new set appears.  Good luck.

When this winter finally loosens its death grip, I predict an epidemic of Spring Fever unseen since 1983 when the citizenry of Farnum, Illinois, celebrated the end of the frozen months by donning corn husk hats and drinking dandelion wine out of shoes.  While I don’t suggest something like that could ever happen again (new laws prohibit it, anyway), I do fear that people will shed responsibilities as eagerly as they shed heavy coats and mittens and have to pay the consequences.  Rather than abandoning all obligations (classes, work, family, etc.), I suggest a simple solution that will allow us not only to acknowledge our joy at the coming of a new, warmer, greener season but will also provide us a reason to come to campus each day.

Skipping.

I’m not talking, of course, about taking a day off from class or work here.  No, I mean the physical act of skipping, the forward propulsion of the body by hopping and stepping on alternate feet, that giddy and goofy way of moving along that most of us left behind when we entered junior high.   Skipping, after all, is a gait best suited to warm, sunny days—opposed to the scuffling trudge of gray winter weather—and reminds us with each elevated step what a great world this is, after all.  It’s virtually impossible to be in a bad mood when you’re bobbing your way down a hallway or along a sidewalk.  Try it and see if you don’t immediately smile.

Besides your unbridled glee, imagine the astonishment you will experience seeing students and professors and college administrators and staff—custodians and accountants alike—all hippity-hopping on their way to a class or a meeting, all dreary thoughts forgotten.

For those who have difficulty skipping—that includes me—we can offer remedial classes; perhaps even community education courses on weekends to spread the movement into the entire district, thus ensuring the passage of our referendum!  But I get ahead of myself…

Before we convert the world, let’s take one small step—a high and bouncy one—and encourage our fellow ECCers to join the movement.  As part of the college’s 60^th anniversary, let’s proclaim a skip day, a day when we loose the bonds of earth and soar, if ever so slightly!

(This excerpt is from my new book, Indulge Me, which will probably never get published, for obvious reasons.)