Monthly Archives: September 2010

Believe in the Utter Sweetness of Your Life

By Robin Bates | Published: September 12, 2010

A beautiful Yom Kippur poem by Philip Schultz.

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The NFL as Chicago Slaughterhouse

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2010

  Sports Saturday Football season has begun, with a full slate of games scheduled for tomorrow. The good news is that the seven-month drought known as offseason ends for fans of America’s most popular game. The bad news is that, once again, young men will go back to permanently damaging themselves as they fling their […]

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My Favorite Film: Spirit of the Beehive

By Robin Bates | Published: September 10, 2010

Film Friday In today’s post I write about my favorite film, one that pulls me into the world of a child’s imagination like no other artistic work. The film is Victor Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive (Espíritu de la colmena), which came out in 1973. The film is set during or immediately after the Spanish […]

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The Bard’s Defense of Midsummer Marriage

By Robin Bates | Published: September 9, 2010

Teaching a course in British Fantasy has given me a new perspective on Midsummer Night’s Dream, our first work. The course could be called (borrowing from Bruno Bettelheim) “the uses of enchantment” because our focus is on how and why people turn to fantasy. In our class discussion, we decided that Shakespeare uses his green […]

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Most Plagiarists Fail to “Sin Nobly”

By Robin Bates | Published: September 8, 2010

Jason Blake’s guest column this week is on the issue of plagiarism. Jason’s experience matches my own: it takes more work to produce a successful plagiarism than to write an acceptable essay. Plagiarism is generally so obvious that the plagiarist resembles Tom Sawyer in the episode involving memorized Bible verses. As you may recall, students […]

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Obama Finds a Balm in Gilead

By Robin Bates | Published: September 7, 2010

Marilynne Robinson  I’ve been meaning to write for a while on Marilynne Robinson’s mesmerizing 2006 novel Gilead. I learned recently that it is one of Barack Obama’s favorite novels, which gives me an opportunity to explore how a work of literature impacts someone that we all have a stake in. This isn’t meant to be […]

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A Tribute to the Workers of the World

By Robin Bates | Published: September 6, 2010

Here’s a special Labor Day post for the workers of the world—those who have jobs and those who don’t, those who are overworked and those who are underemployed, those who are treated fairly and those who are exploited, those who are just starting out and those who have been working for a long time, those […]

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Entering the Days of Awe

By Robin Bates | Published: September 5, 2010

Spiritual Sunday Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a time of year when Jews do a spiritual self assessment and take upon themselves responsibility for the sins of the world. As the “days of awe” commence this coming Wednesday, I went looking for a good Rosh Hashanah poem. I found an excellent one by […]

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Neruda and Ted Williams: A Fantasy

By Robin Bates | Published: September 4, 2010

Sports Saturday My colleague Israel Ruiz in our Spanish Department is an enthusiastic baseball fan. He is also Puerto Rican and I have learned a lot about the Puerto Rican love of baseball from him. For instance, did you know that Puerto Rico is second only to the Dominican Republic in providing active Latin American […]

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