FIELDNOTES Issue #11 18 March 2014 At the risk of belaboring the topic of quizzes that has figured prominently in recent fieldnotes, I would like to announce that I joined a pub quiz team. My Swansea University colleagues Dave Anderson and Bryn Willcock, plus Clive (a friend of Dave) and Susan (Bryn’s wife) and I have, two weeks in a row, won a pub quiz. One took place in the Uplands district at a pub Dylan Thomas frequented back in the day. The other quiz took place at the Killay district’s Village Inn. Next week the team will—like Wales against England in the recent Six Nations Rugby match—strive for a threepeat. Let’s hope we do better than Wales did on that rugby pitch. To participate in a pub quiz—a very popular weekly event in many pubs—each player pays 50 pence (a bit less than a U.S. dollar) to the pub. Each team then receives a form on which to record answers to the quiz questions. One set of questions will involve visual recognition. For example, in one quiz, each team received a page of portraits of about fifteen characters from the television series The Simpsons, and members would have to identify each character. Other sets of questions test knowledge in specific subject areas (e.g., Irish geography, U.S. films, British vintage television, European history) that vary from one quiz to another. At the end of the quiz, the teams exchange their answer sheets—just as you did after a pop quiz in junior high algebra class. You score some other team’s responses as the quizmaster, who utters each question during the quiz, states the correct answers. All teams submit the scored answer sheets to the quizmaster, who determines which team earned the most points. That team wins, and receives one or two bottles of wine as a prize (and must then decide how to distribute the swag). You can imagine that on our team, with three out of five teammates having doctorates, the fur flies sometimes during our deliberations. During the second quiz, Bryn insisted that The Bodyguard was the correct answer to one particularly tough question. I just as resolutely declared it was The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Back and forth we debated—until Bryn pointed out a glaring flaw in my logic. I had to fold. And indeed, Bryn’s answer (The Bodyguard) was correct. Some days ago, I invited the Swansea Uni students I teach to submit anonymous written feedback to me about strengths and deltas of module (i.e., course) and me, the instructor. I felt relieved when I discovered that strengths outnumbered deltas, and that most of the latter had easy fixes. An example of a delta several students mentioned was that I had not sufficiently prepared them for their upcoming mid-­‐
term essays. I therefore engineered a slight change of due date, plus delineated for the students the essay content I would be looking for and the skill level in writing I expected them to demonstrate. Several students wrote how much they had appreciated that I learned their names. In the UNCW Communication Studies Dept., we routinely learn them, but doing so is apparently less common among Swansea professors. A number of students complimented me for being polite. That amused me because in my course evaluations from COM 105 at UNCW, a number of students each semester write that I am rude and arrogant. I have never understood such claims. Hoping that one day, no student will saddle me with those deltas, I focus from one school year to the next on being ever more polite -­‐-­‐ much to the disappointment of colleague Anita McDaniel. I used to forward to her, for her amusement, some of snarky messages I would occasionally shoot back to COM 105 students whose emails to me indicated that their boats had foundered on the Shoals of Learned Helplessness. Now, though, in my quest to be perceived as polite, I no longer write such messages. But if British people -­‐-­‐ who are generally some of the politest on earth -­‐-­‐ consider me polite, I’m pretty daggone sure I’m polite. Maybe on Day One of COM 105, I will start wearing a T-­‐shirt bearing the silk-­‐screened legend, “Certified by British Citizens as ‘Polite.’” The charge of arrogance completely puzzles me. I have by now in my life quite naturally developed a certain amount of self-­‐esteem, and as well more than enough modesty or diffidence to counter any self-­‐confidence that exceeds the maximum permissible. In other words, you can’t be arrogant unless you think you have something to be arrogant about -­‐-­‐ which I don’t. Therefore -­‐-­‐ given the legal principle that silence equals consent -­‐-­‐ since no Swansea student claimed I was arrogant, I think I qualify for a second T-­‐shirt, one bearing the legend, “Arrogant? Shhheeeeaaarrrrite!” Over the weekend, I visited the city of St. David’s, located in the far west of Wales. The population of St. David’s: only a few thousand. Yet it is a city because St. David’s boasts a cathedral -­‐-­‐ the historical criterion for a settlement to be deemed a city. The St. David’s cathedral dates from the 12th century although several parts have been rebuilt after destruction or neglect. It may be smaller than some better-­‐known European cathedrals but it has a uniquely tangible spiritual essence. To me, St. David’s cathedral feels like sacred space, of a simple or gentle quality, rather than a grandiose one. At a Colorado wilderness retreat I attended in the early ‘90s, one participant, inspecting the granite boulders surrounding our sprawling camp, commented approvingly that the space contained “stone energy,” i.e., that obduracy that makes stone dependable and steady. As a natural consequence of being built primarily from rough stone, St. David’s exudes “stone energy,” which I find reassuring and welcoming. (I haven’t rock-­‐climbed for a few years, but during the years when I climbed frequently, I learned quickly that solid stone—beautiful in its angles, layers, variegation and cracks—is our friend.) Near the end of my visit, I stepped from the sanctuary into a courtyard. I gazed at the walls—stone, brick and wood playing off of one another—marking its perimeter. I have throughout my life bounced around in, out, through and back again among atheism, agnosticism, and belief in a deity or higher power, and tacked between or bridged Eastern and Western variations on all of the above. I should mention that at one time I thought of that process as “struggling”; but some years ago I elected to retire that label, and instead begin thinking of it as simply “my path,” “my way” or “my journey.” As my eyes wandered meditatively around the peaceful enclosure, I felt a transcendent force near me, something ineffable that I began to notice when, an hour earlier, I had first laid eyes on the cathedral (you come upon it suddenly if you walk to it by the route I used). Up walked a rotund gentleman about my age, wearing clerical garb. I noted his attire and declared, brilliantly, “You’re a member of clergy!” “Right you are,” he replied, “I’m one of the canons at St. David’s.” As we stood in the courtyard I told him about the beatific feelings that had come upon me. He nodded thoughtfully and agreed that the place can have that effect on people. I then added, “What’s interesting is that I’m having that experience in a cathedral, yet I’m Jewish.” The canon, an Englishman named Jeffrey, smiled broadly, placed his hand on my shoulder, and in fluent, correctly-­‐accented Hebrew, intoned, “Baruch ata adonai, eloheinu melech ha-­‐olam, ha-­‐motzi lehem min ha-­‐aretz” -­‐-­‐ the brief version of the traditional Jewish grace before meals! Wholly incongruent, since we were not breaking bread at the moment, but very kind, and straight from the heart; and with its out-­‐of-­‐left-­‐field charm, a perfect valedictory for my unexpectedly emotional engagement with St. David’s. I thanked Jeffrey for his blessing, shaking his hand warmly; and silently, I prayed that more people in the world may feel as fortunate as I have come to know I am in my life.