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.
Absolutely!
April 15, 2012
Is your world drab and drear, Bunky? Do people snicker when you slink into a room? Has your love life been on hold since the Clinton administration? Well, you don’t have to be that guy! Doctor Shea is here with a cure, my man! With Dr. Shea’s help, the sun will break through, men will respect and envy you, and the women…oo la la! Whence comes this salvation, you wonder? Two words: absolute phrase!
Dingbats
April 8, 2012
Fuck. There, that’s out of the way. We gather today, brethren and sistren, to talk about obscenity, vulgarity, cursing. Bad language not in the grammatical sense but in the moral sense. I warn you that we may get to talking dirty. A news story brought this to mind. Some people want to take another look at the strictures that broadcast media labor under. On cable and satellite TV practically anything goes, but on broadcast TV if a star at an awards show releases the so-called f-bomb—as has happened more than once—heads might roll.
Recommendations
April 1, 2012
The letter of recommendation, usually for a student applying to grad school or for a new PhD applying for her first real teaching job, is a fact of academic life and a venerable tradition. In the past two weeks I have written three, though two were for the same student and were essentially variations on a theme for two similar programs. Over the years I have written countless recommendations. I hope they helped.
Indiana Shea and the Ruta Maya
March 25, 2012
I am beginning this wonk in longhand, sitting by the pool at the Palma Real condominiums south of Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico. A stiff ocean breeze is making those royal palms sway, but it is not unpleasant. Dear me no, it is not unpleasant at all. Just past the pool and the palapas,* the Caribbean laps sand which, more than anything, resembles powdered sugar. The condo’s statue of Neptune, in fetching premature verdigris, presides over the scene, hailing passing ships.
Seventy
February 28, 2012
“Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.” This 3rd of March Mrs. Shea’s little boy will notch his seventieth year on God’s green Earth. I hesitated to write a wonk about it. Having already written at least three wonks on aging, I didn’t want to risk becoming a garrulous old bore on the subject. But I was working on a wonk that wasn’t working out, and reaching the Biblical allotment is just too tempting a subject.
Olio (Oleo?)
January 28, 2012
Olio or oleo? The two are staples in crossword puzzles, and I can’t keep them straight. One is a butter substitute, the other a melange, a potpourri, a miscellany. This wonk of course will be the latter, but which word applies, you ask? Hey, look it up. I can’t be doing everything for you. But Happy New Year. We have survived another one. And I promise that if this is a retrospective, it will be only accidentally so.
Dear Me
December 24, 2011
There is a book just out entitled Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self. The instigator, Joseph Galliano, invited many celebrities to do just that, to write such a letter. (To his credit, the profits will go not to Galliano but to a charity.) This letter business is not a new idea, but as a writing prompt it is certainly a cut above “My Pet Peeve.” It invites somber reflection, wiseacre humor, and much in between.
Roadie
December 11, 2011
I’m in love. I don’t mean with the Longsuffering Diana, although that is certainly true and forever will be. And our kids and grandkids are so rooted in my heart as never to be extirpated. But I find myself in love with 23 pounds of canine named Roadie. Never thought we’d have a dog again, and I have a good story for you. A little over a year ago I’m following my son-in-law in a two-car caravan on a miserable morning, overcast, drizzly, and cold, when I see this little dog worrying some roadkill right in the middle of the highway.
Calvin Untroped
December 4, 2011
Readers of this space know that I teach classical tropes every fall (see “Tropes”). The basic assignment that I give my trope babies is a “lemon squeeze” of a passage—identify all the tropes that you can—and I usually pick out something that is reliably rich with tropes: poetic prose perhaps, or oratorical prose (Lincoln, Kennedy, King, etc.). But tropes are where you find them and the other week the trope babies and I had a go at one of my all time favorite comic strips, just one example from Bill Watterson’s brilliant Calvin and Hobbes series.
Crazy Grammar
November 27, 2011
Because we use words, we must use grammar to string them together. “Grammar” has a telling history, being related to “glamour” and “grimoire.” Glamour has come down some in the world, referring now mostly to Tinsel Town denizens, jet-setters, all that social fluff. But originally it referred to magic, to witchery. Similarly, a grimoire was a sorcerer’s handbook, a book of spells. Hocus Pocus, Dominocus (a parody of church Latin) and all that.