John Arkwright's Page

My new economics colleague at the university is going through faculty orientation. His orientation lasts for a week. Two years ago, mine lasted two days. At my last job, orientation stole two days from me. At my first job, twenty years ago, orientation lasted thirty minutes.

How much orientation does one need? The thirty minute orientation was about twenty minutes too long. A week long orientation is a heartless theft of irreplaceable time.

In my thirty minute orientatio…

My ancestry is strongly Irish and Injun. Suffrage has two characters with Irish accents. I am doing a reading on Saturday and need to do a passable accent for those characters.

I would prefer not to do the accent on the old Kelly's Chili or Irish Spring soap commercials. So I have been looking for Irish accents to mimic.

My son had an interesting technique. When y…

We left for church at about 9:30. As soon as I shut the door, I asked Julia, "You do have your key, don't you?"

I once heard a comedian (maybe it was George Carlin) define an "idio-second" as the period of time that elapses between your hand leaving the knob and your realization that the keys are locked inside.

Julia checked her purse. No keys.

I was preoccupied with the keys on the way to church. We don't have a spare key hidden anywhere or a window left unlocked in c…

My son walked up while I was sitting down to watch a boring news show. He said, "Dad, I have a question for you."

I try to irritate him as much as possible, so I pretended to answer his unasked question. "When a man and a woman love each other very much . . . "

He said, "No, Dad! Not that!"

I said, "There is nothing more important than continuing the species--the cycle of life."

He said, "Yes there is. I want to know if you'll make cookies out of this cake mix…

Finally! My long summer, in which I did not get a decent vacation, is over. I turned the grades in for the second summer session after the final.

Now and then I have a student who is clueless. I had one this time around.

The student had some problems and did not attend the last two weeks of the five week session. I thought the student had grounds to file a…