Tuesday, July 27, 2010

A summer day in New Orleans

I had a little time to kill this afternoon, and I decided to get gas for the car while the needle was still hovering above "Empty."

The temperature had been in the 90s, and no rain was in the forecast I had heard on the noon news, so I punched the button on the pump to get the deluxe wash,too. “See the attendant,” a pop-up on the screen told me. I filled my tank and went inside the store to do what I had been told.

“The car wash is broken,” a dark fellow with what I took to be a thick Pakistani accent told me. I had not heard him clearly. “What?” I asked. A lighter skinned man behind the immigrant said more clearly, “The car wash is broken.”

Another day in New Orleans, I thought, not altogether happily, and walked outside and drove away.

An hour or so later, I was sitting in the den reading, and I heard rain against the window pane. “Lucky for me the wash was broken,” I thought. (Had I gotten the wash, of course, I would have muttered, "Just my luck.")

I should have second-guessed the weatherman. Earlier, I had looked up at the sky, and it was filled with great fluffy creatures: crouching rabbits, begging poodles and a full-bodied naked woman lying on her side.

After the rain had stopped, I took the dogs out into the steam, and we walked three-quarters around the block when the rain began again. I had had the foresight to take an umbrella, but the dogs had not, so they needed drying when we got home. Still, as soon as I had worked them over with beach towels, they shook whatever wet was left on them on me and the furniture.

By then, the rain had stopped again, and we have had no more since.

And no more cumulus rabbits, poodles, or – I am sad to say – full-bodied naked women.

Nuthin' but blue skies.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Dux Academicus



Loyola University honored me with its Dux Academicus award for 2009 at the January convocation. The award is given annually to a faculty member who “is able to impart the knowledge and wisdom of the humanities, sciences or the professions to students in a manner consistent with the unique philosophy of Loyola University New Orleans as a Jesuit institution of higher education.” My response--I was alloted two minutes--was the following:


I am greatly honored – and the moreso because I so admire and respect those of our colleagues whom I have watched come up here in the past to accept the Dux Academicus. I am in awe of that company.

To be singled out when there are so many of you merit this award, is humbling.
And to be recognized for outstanding teaching, scholarship and service in a Jesuit institution makes the moment golden.

I have been with the Jesuits, on both sides of the desk, for nearly 60 years all told—from that time when they wore those forbidding black cassocks to now, when we might occasionally spot a Jesuit on campus in pink button-down shirt and Madras Bermuda shorts. At one time, I had the temerity to think I might be one of them and entered a novitiate. I lasted until lent.

Though the Jesuits are fewer now than when they wore the black robes, their ideas are still the palpable soul of this campus. Justin Nystrom, of the history department, and I walked together from the parking garage to Bobet Monday morning, and I asked him how he had enjoyed his first semester of teaching here. Justin said, “it’s nice to be at a place with a broader vision.” And indeed it is--after his one semester or my fifty-seven.

It occurred to me long ago that we lay faculty who are privileged to be associated with the Jesuits absorb at least some of their characteristics, to our students’ benefit: that purposeful, spiritually driven striving to form young men and women, intellectually and morally, who will leave Loyola—to paraphrase Cardinal Newman—fit for the world.

My wife, Kathy, also a Jesuit university graduate, and I have five children, and we sent each of them to Loyola--not just because the price was right--though the price was right--but because we knew that this faculty, you with your broader vision, would do an outstanding job of educating them in the Jesuit tradition. We were not disappointed.

It is an honor, in itself, to be associated with you.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Discounting Happy Motoring

The cute young woman in the white pants suit who pitches Progressive automobile insurance 0n television has made us all aware that of the many discounts available: for good drivers, good students, non-smokers, and the like. I'd like to suggest that discounts also be provided to drivers who do not have cell phones.

I thought of that this morning on the way to campus when a fellow in one of those monstrosities that you have to buy at a lot on top of a craggy mountain came at me at an intersection and I saw my life pass before my eyes (not a pretty show, by the way). We avoided an accident, but I'm sure we would not have nearly met that way had he not had his cell phone to his ear.

God knows where his mind was. Having just left home myself, I figured that maybe his wife was giving him what-for for having forgotten all the things he should have done yesterday and telling him he'd darn well better not forget today.

I know I'd be listening to my wife give me the dickens for that sort of thing if I had a cell phone. Without one, however, I just get to listen to that before I go out the door, say my "yes, dears," and climb into the silence of my car. So I drive much more carefully than my near new acquaintance, and I think it only just that my insurance rates be lower than his

In fact, it occurs to me that it's also dangerous for me to drive with my wife alongside me and listen to her recite all my undone tasks and other faults, of which the list is just a page or two longer than the litany of the saints, and how much safer I am when I'm alone in the car and able to devote my full attention to avoiding accidents with people who are talking (or, in the case of husbands, listening) on their cell phones.

Come to think of it, maybe the insurance companies also ought to give a safe driver discount for husbands who drive alone.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Two articles published on paper

While I was putting finishing touches on the syllabus for my spring course Communications Writing, I decided to let students see (and criticize, if they wish) postings on this blog. For them, and for my other two or three readers, I’ll include two articles that I wrote for Conversations, a publication distributed to faculty and staff members of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities.

“Katrina Strikes and Southern Jesuit Colleges Survive,” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, No. 29 (Spring 2006)

http://www.marquette.edu/library/archives/Conversations/No29_2006/29_lorenz.pdf



“Journalism and Jesuit Mission,” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, No. 35 (Spring 2009)

http://www.marquette.edu/library/archives/Conversations/No35_2009/no35_lorenz.pdf


Friday, January 1, 2010

Plumbing the Unfathomable

There’s something about the holidays that brings out the best in people.

And, in my experience, the worst in the plumbing.

I remember one New Year’s Eve when my mother was visiting and was doing the dishes. Somehow, she dropped a shot glass into the disposal and ground it up. The water rose in the sink.

My mother cried.

I crawled under the sink with my wrench and swore. Everyone else went outside to watch fireworks.

The next day, the plumbers came. The problem was not in the disposal, they found, but in the drain pipe out to the main waste drain. They came back, dug up the yard, replaced the pipe—a root had grown into it—and all was well again.

I thought of that in the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

The Delta faucet on our kitchen sink had been dripping, so the day after Christmas I went to the neighborhood hardware store to get the washers I’d need to stop the drip. The store was closed. It would not reopen until Monday, I read on the sign taped to the door. I went to Lowe’s, found the washers, went through the automatic checkout, picked up my change, and went out to the car. I took out the key and realized I had left the washers in the sack at the checkout point.

Back to the store. Two men were at the same checkout point.

Did you find…?

These yores? one asked. Here y’are podner. He handed me the little packet, which he had taken out of the sack I had put in.

Back home, I replaced the springs and washers, and that took care of the drip. But when I turned the water back on, the hot water was a mere trickle. I must have put in a couple of hours opening the patient up again, closing, opening, closing, until I figured that rusted filings in the pipes might have clogged it. I needed a specialist. I called my regular plumber.

Sorry, he told me. I’m retiring on January first. Too many forms to fill out, too much red tape. After the first, I’m going to work for the parish government as an inspector. To be part of the problem, I thought to myself.

I called a plumber in the neighborhood. He confirmed my diagnosis and showed me a T that looked like a cross section of one of those arteries in the commercials that have me talking to my doctor. It’s a wonder any water got through at all. (Reminder: Be sure to have cholesterol checked at next physical.)

He replaced some pipes and got the water flowing well again.

Not what it should be, he said. This ‘uns pretty old, so you might replace it. When you get a new one, call us and we’ll install it fer ya.

We spent another hour together, the plumber and I, in the bathroom of the upstairs rental unit. The tenants had complained of the failure of the bathtub to drain properly, largely because, as I determined, they had no screen over the drain. They could have solved the problem with a trip to the hardware store, but it’s easier to call the landlord.

The toilet isn’t flushing right, either, the tenant had told me. It hasn’t worked well for a couple of months.

He or his roommate had taken the lid off so they could manipulate the innards to flush.

I had the plumber replace the Fluidmaster. I’ve done my share of installing Fluidmasters, and I figured I’d have the him do it, and I would take his fee off the income tax. I can’t do that with my own work.

Oh, yeah, the tenant said, all the electricity has been off in one room for awhile.

That I fixed with a click of the circuit breaker. Then I picked up all the fuses that someone had scattered around the room that holds the electrical boxes (one box with breakers, one with fuses).

On the way home I stopped at the hardware store in my neighborhood to pick up a strainer for the tub. I had measured the diameter of the opening with a folded dollar bill. 1 ½ inches in diameter looked perfect. But when I went back the next day, I found that the strainer was just a bit larger than the hole. I went around the corner to the hardware store near the rental and got one that fit. Then I took the larger one back to my neighborhood store.

My father always told me, things will be better after the first of the year. He just didn’t tell me which year.