Articles by Jerome Shea
Jerome Shea is an emeritus professor of English at the University of New Mexico, where he still teaches his classical tropes course every fall and his prose style course every spring. He has been the Weekend Wonk since January of 2007. His email is shea@macinstruct.com.
SoCal II
June 23, 2007
Tip: If you missed last week’s Weekend Wonk, be sure to check it out. It’s the first part of this series. Slept well? Hope so. Let’s go. About 4 miles south of Kingman we will leave I-40 and head into the mountains on old 66, cresting Sitgreaves Pass at 3652 feet and dropping …
SoCal I
June 16, 2007
Having a friend in L.A., another in South Laguna, and a son in San Diego, I have over the years become a real aficionado of Southern California. I know that SoCal is an easy target for critics: ticky-tacky sprawl, the kingdom of the mall, developers on a roll, freeways out of control (you see that …
Retirement
June 9, 2007
I did it. I retired about two weeks ago and it seems fitting that I mark the occasion in this cyber journal or whatever you want to call it. I am now a retiree, official senior citizen, duffer, old fart, whatever. If you want to give it some dignity, I am now professor emeritus after 30 years at the …
World’s Worst Poet
May 27, 2007
Give ear, Gentle Reader: And the Tower of London is most gloomy to behold And the crown of England lies there, begemmed with precious stones and gold. King Henry the Sixth was murdered there by the Duke of Glo’ster, And when he killed him with his sword he called him an imposter. Please meet William …
Sabine Baring-Gould
May 19, 2007
What? You’ve never heard of Sabine Baring-Gould? Dear me. A Google search will turn up a dozen pages of citations (no, really). There is a Sabine Baring-Gould Appreciation Society (small but determined). He wrote more histories, novels, tracts, sermons, essays, and whatnot—especially whatnot—than a …
Harold Welsh (or Welsch) Revisited
May 12, 2007
Back in March, I wrote about my erstwhile colleague Harold Welsh, brought low by an inadvertent pun ("Great Moments in Teaching"). But the account was not as it seemed. I had not had contact with Harold in 40 years, but we do have a mutual friend who supplied an address—Harold is still in …
Of Escalades and Steak Knives
May 5, 2007
If they are not worming through your phone line, they are lying in wait in your mailbox: folks who want to reward you magnificently just for coming to their solar energy seminar or tromping about their chunk of mountain or mesa. It’s the reward that tickles me, and by now it’s familiar to most of …
The I-Man Goeth
April 21, 2007
(Can you stand one more column about Don Imus, Gentle Reader? That’s what I thought. Well, since you are staring at the monitor anyway you can do some surfing, play Tetris, whatever, while I indulge myself. You won’t hurt my feelings.) Don Imus, talk show shock jock, deserved to be fired. Let’s get …
Running a Requiem, Singing a Marathon
April 7, 2007
I am runner and a singer. More specifically, I run marathons and I sing (bass) with the University of New Mexico Chorus. I ran my first marathon—the Duke City, here in Albuquerque—in 1986, I joined the chorus a couple of years later, and here I am in 2007 still running and still singing. Early on I …
Breaking the Law... or Broken Laws?
March 31, 2007
News item (The Week, 23 March) Twenty-one years ago, Juan Matamoros was ticketed for public urination in Massachusetts. Now 49 and living in Florida, Matamoros is being forced to move with his family, because a new law bans “sex offenders” from living within 2,500 feet of a child-care facility. …