Meanwhile back in the Madtown

I saw that the Wisconsin State Journal has an update on my former professor Keith Cohen today. I wrote about Prof. Cohen back in March.

Cohen, 60, pleaded no contest on July 28 in Milwaukee County Circuit Court to one count of exposing a child to harmful materials. He was sentenced to two years' probation and 30 days in jail, with work-release privileges.

His jail sentence started Aug. 26 and ends Sunday. Starting Aug. 29, Cohen had been serving part of his work release on campus. He wasn't teaching classes, but he commuted to Madison to work at Van Hise Hall, where his office is located....

"Our goal throughout all of this was to find productive work for Cohen - since we are required by law to pay him - that would keep him away from students as well as staff and faculty," [UW- Madison Provost Peter] Spear said. "Now that our investigation is complete and we have determined that he should be terminated, we have decided to remove him from campus immediately."

The full article is here. I hope the thirty days knocked some sense into the man, but I also hope that he's okay and that his friends among the faculty can forgive him.

Last Letters

All of my grades have been posted. I received an 'AB' in James Joyce; I'm quite pleased with that since the course was not recommended for anyone but advanced English majors. My GPA for the semester was 3.647, which raised my cumulative GPA to 3.569, which isn't up to my Simon's Rock level (stemming from the combination of harder math classes and the replacement of the 3.667 'A-' with the 3.500 'AB'), but it's not shabby either.

Wine Instead Of Bourbon

I'm home, and although I don't have all my grades yet I suspect I've graduated from college. In 16-18 weeks my parents should find in their mail a diploma that proclaims that I hold a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics.

I know that bourbon is the drink for a college graduate (when he's not being seduced by Mrs. Robinson or scuba diving in the backyard pool), wine is more to my liking. Breaking from our pleasant trip home, my dad and I took a tour of Wollersheim Winery, a vineyard not far outside of Madison which was founded by the same man who founded the first vineyard in the Sonoma Valley in California. The tour concluded with a wine tasting, and I tried five wines starting with a chardonnay and ending with a port. I helped my dad with the shopping, and he was kind enough to buy a bottle of the port at my request. I was rather tired from a very short night of sleep (90 minutes), so we kept the music going to stay awake during the drive back. We played Nine Inch Nails, Dave Matthew Band, The Smashing Pumpkins, and CAKE, so I was happy despite my drowsiness.

I'm not sure how often I'll be posting this summer, but I suspect it will be somewhat less frequent than I do during the school year.

[I didn't mention the tasting in the first draft of this post since I wasn't sure if I should have been carded, but it seems that Wisconsin state law allows minors to consume alcohol in the presence of their parents independent of location, a somewhat looser exception to the drinking age than that to which I'm accustomed here in Minnesota. Thanks to Claire with her unsettling extensive knowledge of drinking laws for the tip.]

Napoleon's cousin?

For a short while today, I thought I might be sitting with Napoleon Dynamite or maybe a close cousin of that infamous high school outcast. I went to the Honors Student Organization spring kickoff meeting (primarily for the free pizza but also to be the first to hear what sort of activities will be coming up). Nothing sounded outrageously cool except for the possible opportunity to get subsidized tickets to The Producers, but I'm hoping that the regularly occurring events such as the Chicago trip will happen even if they weren't mentioned.

I was one of the first to arrive, and I soon found the chairs around me taken by a couple of bespectacled white guys, both of whom were first years with a lot of advanced standing credits. And one of them sounded just like Napoleon Dynamite. He didn't have Napoleon's temper (I never heard him say "Whatever I feel like I wanna do, gosh!"), but his voice was quite similar, and he had that same unusual but not unpleasant awkwardness. What actually amused me more was that both guys talked a great deal about their advanced standing credits, saying how hard it was to decide if they should call themselves freshmen or juniors. After talking to me about it for about three minutes straight, they confided in me that they just call themselves "first years" so no one thought they were too proud of their standing. I've actually done just that on a number of occasions, so I know what they mean, but I was still amused that they unknowingly tried to impress the one guy in the room who will graduate at a younger age than they will. I think they would have continued to pursue the topic if I hadn't been rescued by the arrival of my buddy Les Chappell.

Spring 2005 / Ywimpled

Today marked the first day of classes in what is presumably my last semester here at Madison. I'm taking seventeen credits, and my course list is as follows:

Introduction to Cryptography
James Joyce
Environmental Conservation
Art History: Ancient and Medieval
The Rise of American Post Colonial Architecture

I started the first two classes this morning. The math course went as expected, although I had the distinct impression that there are few math majors in there besides the professor and myself; most of the pasty male-dominated class seemed to be from the computer science department or the engineering school. James Joyce was another matter entirely. We took attendance, and then our professor sighed and said that it was time for him to try to dissuade us from taking the class. He spoke at length about the tediousness and difficulty of reading Ulysses and quoted criticism from a few of the novel's more esteemed detractors. He suggested we read one of particular episode of the book tonight so that we can see if we really want to continue. (The episode he recommended is generally known as "Oxen of the Sun," a name given to it by Joyce himself, although never within the pages of Ulysses.)

I've finished Thursday's actual assigned reading, so I've been "reading" the section. In truth, I've found it to be impenetrable thus far, but intriguing nonetheless. Heck, just a title like "Oxen of the Sun" has me interested. Still, sentences such as 'Before born babe bliss had.' are quite challenging. Even individual words give me a run for my money. This is almost certainly the first time I've ever encountered "ywimpled." For this word, I did a quick Google search. jheem on Wordsmith.org says "The y- prefix is from the earlier Old English ge- prefix, which like its cognate in German, is one of the signs of the past participle in Old and Middle English...A wimple is a nun's hood which covers the nun's head and hair. It's sort of like a Christian burqa, but different from a snood. So, ywimpled would mean wearing a wimple or being a nun."

I think this class has the potential to be one of the most highly educational of my college career.

End

I've completed my spring semester. I'm half-packed and chilling out with Phish. The current song is, appropriately, "Free." I'll probably be a little quieter until I get to New York in July. I'll try to keep tweaking the format, so it'll be easier to add comments and see where other people have commented. Good luck to my friends at Eau Claire in the comming week.