Hereby resolved
Happy New Year!
I'm not much of a New Year's resolution kind of guy. This may be because I'm an incrementalist, one who picks modest, achievable goals. No point in a grand resolution like losing weight or exercising, either of which would be abandoned by February, leaving the rest of the year for me to feel like a failure.
So I pick entertainment or cultural goals I can accomplish. In '07, I vowed to watch all the James Bond movies, and did, and also to watch the last nine American Film Institute Top 100 movies I hadn't seen, which I also did.
For '08: I plan to read "Moby Dick." It's past time I read what may be America's greatest novel -- especially since I've owned a copy since 1998.
Any unusual goals or resolutions, past or present, you'd care to share?
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A journalist for more than two decades, David Allen has been writing a column for the Daily Bulletin since 1997 and blogging since 2007.He lives in Claremont.
E-mail David here or read columns here.
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Having read Moby Dick in College I strongly recommend you skip the whaling chapters on blubber rendering. You might be able to finish the book by New Year's. And this from a High School English teacher!
[Having suffered through John Galt's 60-page radio speech in "Atlas Shrugged," I'll try to read every word of "Moby Dick" no matter how dull it gets. But I sped through Galt's speech without worrying about comprehending it, and may do the same with Melville. -- DA]
Hi David, Moby Dick made such an impression upon me when I read it in the first semester of my high school junior year that I didn't want to read another novel. This, of course, had a deleterious effect upon my English Lit. grade in the second semester of that school year.
[One of the Bulletin editors read MD in high school. I feel kind of out of it. -- DA]
My 2008 resolution is to read my second great American novel.
David, you are hereby "taken to task" for referring to Chaffey College as a "junior college."
Such colleges are properly called "community colleges" and for good reason.
When many people hear the "junior college" they assume that if you go to such a college and then go to a 4-yr college, you start all over again as a freshman. In California, agreements exist between the UC system and the UC system that guarantees the classes you take in a community college will be accepted by the four-year colleges.
This is a former high school counselor writing. One who fought the battle of confusion about colleges for many years.
Happy New Year, David!
[Happy New Year to you. Taking my cue from my colleague Joe Blackstock's recent history piece, saying Chaffey was "California's first junior college" was correct, as that's what they were called in 1916, even though today such institutions are known as community colleges. I went to a junior college myself in Illinois and certainly intended no slight. -- DA]
Heya David, I don't want to get this thread further off track, but both Pasadena City College and Santa Monica College were referred to as 'junior colleges' when I took courses at them in the 1980s. The courses, by and large, were better funded, planned and taught than my major courses at Pitzer College (a "real" 4-year college) in Claremont in the 1970s.
By the time I took courses in digital media at Chaffey College in 2000 it was called a 'community college' and was just as excellent as the junior colleges I attended.
[Yeah, I'm unclear why "community college" is deemed better than "junior college" or what different message it's supposed to send. But what do I know? I'm a junior college product. -- DA]
"O-tay, Spanky!" I resolve to to go out and get my own copy of the course catalog from my Local Junior Community City College!
You can never have too much educating.
In 1967 I entered Citrus Jr. College. I returned in 1968 to Citrus Community College.
Know what? I didn't notice a thing had changed.