From Monica Bosson, railway enthusiast: 

Monday, 11/7, I presented a talk to the Kosmos Club at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club. The Kosmos Club mostly consists of faculty from the Sciences at Berkeley, both emeritus and still teaching, but there is a sprinkling of faculty members from the Humanities in the club too. Needless to say, I was extremely nervous, but the talk was very well received. The talk ended with a lively discussion of train journeys in various locations around the world and with Professor of Physics Rich Mueler's insightful comment that Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity while he was helping railway companies coordinate their time schedules. This was prompted by my comment that Standard Time was implemented when railways realized that their schedules only worked if everyone agreed what the exact time was. Before the railway, one would find that each town had its own idea of what time it was. Imagine trying to make your BART or MUNI connection and discovering that CCSF is 10 minutes ahead of Colma!

Railways, Reading, and the Victorians With the opening of the Liverpool to Manchester railway line in 1830, British conceptions of speed, time, distance, and communication changed dramatically. Nineteenth-century travelers found it both exhilarating to experience and difficult to adjust to the landscape flying past the windows of the compartments; meanwhile, the popularity of reading while traveling skyrocketed. Our speaker will argue that these two phenomena are directly linked to one another. By allowing the traveler to immerse him or herself in the familiar world of literature, reading during train travel seems to have been an escape from boredom (John Ruskin’s “miserable” traveler), the stressful view out of the window, and the uncomfortable conflation of time and space.  Railway bookstalls, opened by W.H. Smith in 1841, capitalized on this trend. Thus, the railway leads directly to the expansion of the marketplace for books and ends up giving people of different classes access to texts that had once been available to only those upper-class passengers who could afford to purchase books. In addition, many of the books read during travel reflect the passengers’ mixture of awe and anxiety when being carried rapidly from one destination to another.

 From Daniel Brown:

 From Publius:

Christoph Greger Pauses for Applause Before screening Ken Russell's Gothic for his English 46C class, Christoph Greger paused for applause that never came.  Before starting the Russell film about Byron and the Shelleys, Greger stood in front of the blank screen and announced, "Let's all join together and show the kind of spirit that made George Gordon,  Lord Byron, Sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale, the greatest poet, revolutionary, philosopher, and bisexual tobacco-chewer of the romantic era!" After twelve seconds of silence, Greger added, "Well, moving on," and spoke for 15 minutes about the importance of using the restroom during the 10-minute passing period between classes.

"I should have gone with a Keats joke about thick-sighted ambition.  Live and learn," said Greger, now enrolled in an 8-week MC class at the Learning Annex.

From Publius:

On the Hot Seat: Diane Romero, the New English Department Secretary
What type of dog do you have?  What's your dog's name, and how old is he or she in dog years? A Shar-pei. Her name is Miyake, and she is 70 years old. Do you every dress your dog in a Sherlock Holmes costume, including the pipe? No, her wrinkles are good enough.
Your favorite episode of STAR TREK? No favorite comes to mind. Do you consider your position in the English Department similar to Lieutenant Uhura's? Yes, I do. Who is the assistant you've brought with you from the Delta Quadrant?  Is he a member of the Federation? Jesse Cruz, a member of the Federation since we began working together three semesters ago.  Does that mean Krizy's a Romulan? Yes, but also in the Federation.
If the orange cubicle walls could be changed to a different color, which color should that be? Soft yellow. Do you hail Cyberia? I do if it's a great resource for the students. Casey Stengel or Bill Walsh? I love both. What is the primary source of heat in John Batty-Sylvan's office? The warm sun, of course. Thank you, Diane, for being on The Hot Seat !

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 From Carol Fregly:

Departmental Nuts and Chews Carol Fregly will be sending out forms for your 30% discount on See's Candies gift certificates.  Yum, 30% of the price--but 100% delicious. Email Carol for more information.

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 From Benjamin Bacsierra, Puente Program Instructor:

On Saturday, October 15, 2005, City College’s Puente Program, which is now in the English 96 phase, held a barbeque at Batmale Hall Plaza so that the students, faculty, and their families could get to know each other outside of the classroom. Because of the location, everyone enjoyed carne asada, pollo, and other tasty treats, while they viewed the CCSF Rams play football against Sacramento’s Panthers. Kids flew kites, students played dominoes, and students, faculty, and family members ate very well. The Puente Program now looks forward to making this an annual event.

 From Lisa King, reading training co-coordinator:

 From Bill McGuire, your social coordinator:

Hold the date of Saturday, December l0, open--for the English Department Holiday Party will be held at the home of Barbara Scrafford, commencing at 7:00 pm.  The format is Pot Luck and BYOB.  Invitations and directions will be coming soon. Also, there is still time to order half-price tickets to the S.F. Symphony. Please get the word out to the students.  Bill McGuire has plenty of forms in Arts 213. Any questions, they can reach Bill at 452-7257. Watch out--Bill McGuire's using electronic mail! Could he be America's next great spammer or hacker? Learn more about Festivus and the Feats of Strength.

 From Craig Kleinman, your humble lab boy:

 From Cindy Slates & Alisa Messer, Writing Lab co-coordinators:

 From the English Department lab elves:

LAB-OF-THE-FUTURE Contest Reeks of Scandal

SAN FRANCISCO–Controversy has engulfed the City College of San Francisco English Department, where for over one month a LAB-OF-THE-FUTURE contest has been mired in corruption, Batmale Hall sources reported Monday.  

The contest kicked off in the September issue of the English Department Newsletter, but since then there have been at least 15 confirmed cases of LAB-OF-THE-FUTURE-proposal fraud, including email box stuffing and illegal deletion of contest entries.  According to the LAB-OF-THE-FUTURE contest overseer, Randy, last name unknown, the May 2005 Cyberia lab assistant of the month, this is "muy uncool.  Muy, man."  

By Tuesday, it appeared that only two of the entries were legitimate: one submitted by Hari Costarides, the other by a long-term emergency hire calling himself Alab Ray Dohr, formerly of the University of Bangladesh. By Tuesday night, Randy, last name unknown, had determined that Alab Ray Dohr was not a real employee of CCSF.  "We thought it would be cool for the LAB-OF-THE-FUTURE contest winner to be named Alab.  Muy cool, even though his only lab ideas were quills and slates.  But he's not a real person, man."   That left Hari Costarides, your winner of the fall 2005 LAB-OF-THE-FUTURE contest. Congratulations, Hari!  You have won your very own Hasbro Think-a-Tron (in one-dimensional digital format), a wonderful companion for all of your journeys into the future.  Let's travel into the  future through Hari's eyes:

THE LAB-OF-THE-FUTURE  IS NOW!

 From Erin Denney, basic skills coordinator:

 From Lucia Lachmayr:

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recipe of the month 

 From Barbara Scrafford, staff food editor:

A Recipe for Poets

Here’s an idea:  Use the leftover pumpkin from your Thanksgiving pie to make pumpkin bread for the conference room after Thanksgiving!  Your colleagues will be thankful, and the sugar will get them through to finals.

This recipe is in A Cookbook for Poor Poets, from Loren Bell’s collection.

Pumpkin bread
2 1/2 cups sifted flour        1 tablespoon baking powder    1 teaspoon salt        2 teaspoons cinnamon        1 teaspoon ground cloves    1/2 teaspoon mace 1/2 teaspoon baking soda	1 cup chopped walnuts 1/2 cup shortening 1 cup brown sugar 2 eggs 1 cup buttermilk 3/4 cup canned pumpkin

Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, spices, and soda. Mix in the walnuts. Cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy, add eggs, and beat well.  Combine buttermilk and pumpkin and add to the creamed mixture alternately with flour mixture.  Turn batter into a well-greased 5.5 x 9.5 inch loaf pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for an hour and 15 minutes.  Turn out of pan and cool on a rack.  Bring to conference room.

By the way, Loren Bell reportedly has some moose meat in his freezer. I think I have just the recipe. Later . . . .

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 From Marc Dulman, featured poet of the month:

Flying to California Slain dragons Are the rivers below. They’re all over the place: The head in mountain time, The tail back east. When we get to the coast The land does funny things: It ripples, As if still being formed, As if unsure Where it’s going.

This issue of the English Department Newsletter has been sponsored by the good people of Prepare to be amazed when you use the composition and grammar programs, as well as the Cyberia lab activity form.   Cyberia: It's Cool

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 From Randy, Cyberia's main man:

The Randy Tip of the Month: The Myth of Ergonomics   Colleges should become laboratories for costly, unscientific government regulations. Don't believe it, man.  The government just wants our English labs to be expensive, pseudoscientific federalist stooge parlors. Ask the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) if you don't believe me. You can't force employers to teach employees the scientifically invalid and false assumptions underlying the rules of the human body as if they were truths. Yet, despite the billions of dollars it will cost, mandatory ergonomic regulation will not assure the prevention of a single injury, even in Cyberia.    Back in the '70s,  there were these two students always typing the same assignment at the same time on Cyberia's Brother electric  typewriters.  One developed back strain; the other had wrist problems.  You just need to take vitamins and herbal supplements, man.  Sipping a Kava-Kava drink helps, too, when staring at a computer.  The data just isn't there, man, to regulate ergonomic practices beyond the volunteer level, but I will tell you this much: wrist supports are on sale at Walgreen's,  and Ethel Tang-Quan's husband, Victor, is a great chiropractor.

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Please submit newsletter ideas, photos, poems, teaching tips, recipes, gossip, propaganda. . . .

Send contributions to amesser@ccsf.edu or ckleinma@ccsf.edu.