.png)
THIS GEM OF ''A NATTY PROFESSOR!''
A BLACK BMW K75, purring cooly, coasts out of Massachusetts fog into the middle of the girls soccer field at Phillips Academy, in Andover. Sill gliding the $10,000 bike crosses the white midline. Suddenly the engine throttles down, the headlight dims and the leather clad rider shifts a little in the saddle and flips the ignition.The bike rolls to a silent stop near the penalty area.
A pair of leathered legs unfold from the cowling and extend downward to the grass. The whole field bursts into a laud applause and cheers. Professor David Cobb who regards teaching as a theater -and dresses accordingly has arrived to the utter delight of his students.
Every piece of his clothing is dark. Which is just how the chairman of Andover's English department likes it. David Cobb, at the prep school for twenty-six years, then, is not your father's English teacher. He was a visiting Professor of Aesthetics at Cambridge University, and wears cowboy boots and spurs with his three piece suits. He drinks coffee from a Darth Vader mug. The halls of his department, in a building constructed in 1819, are decorated with busts of Shakespeare. Milton and Elvis.
Just out of College, Cobb hit, .298 as a shortstop for Dixfield in the Western Maine League but quit after a year because, he was better at thinking about the game than he was at playing it.
Professor Cobb, in order to lend his teaching ''a little resonance'' joined the marine corps as an infantry and intelligence officer in 1962. As such, he trained British Royal Marines, Korean Marines, Australian Marines, Green Berets, and members of other special forces in hand-to-hand combat. Tactics, raids, demolition, and escape and evasion. He is also an accomplished musician and painter.
On the one hand, he is a throwback to the days of the eccentric boarding-school teacher. On the other, he wears Burberrys suits and can kill you thirteen different ways.
Imagine his dress for the class: Three piece suits, silk shirts, cuff links, occasional handkerchiefs, washable tattoos, occasional mustaches, and cowboy boots, spurs...... Hahaha!
Now that's one hell of a panoply.
The Professor speaks, ''My students often ask me why I dress the way I do. I tell them my mom taught me to dress up for special accasions, and I can not think of a more special occasion than an English class.
What I do not tell them is that I regard Teaching as Theater -and clothes offer the dramatic and thematic expressiveness. For a given moment, you are -or you depict, -what you wear.'' Remarkable, Sir!
Absolutely. Gatsby is a resonant essence. Like the rest of us, he is ''his platonic conception of himself,'' tinged with beauty and fear but full of dreams. Gatsby's style -all style- is part of that.
With many thanks to !WOW! for this honour. Do not miss the next post. You will find this very great Professor at his very best. Full of fun and laughter!
What an honour to be his student.
Good Night & God Bless
A BLACK BMW K75, purring cooly, coasts out of Massachusetts fog into the middle of the girls soccer field at Phillips Academy, in Andover. Sill gliding the $10,000 bike crosses the white midline. Suddenly the engine throttles down, the headlight dims and the leather clad rider shifts a little in the saddle and flips the ignition.The bike rolls to a silent stop near the penalty area.
A pair of leathered legs unfold from the cowling and extend downward to the grass. The whole field bursts into a laud applause and cheers. Professor David Cobb who regards teaching as a theater -and dresses accordingly has arrived to the utter delight of his students.
Every piece of his clothing is dark. Which is just how the chairman of Andover's English department likes it. David Cobb, at the prep school for twenty-six years, then, is not your father's English teacher. He was a visiting Professor of Aesthetics at Cambridge University, and wears cowboy boots and spurs with his three piece suits. He drinks coffee from a Darth Vader mug. The halls of his department, in a building constructed in 1819, are decorated with busts of Shakespeare. Milton and Elvis.
Just out of College, Cobb hit, .298 as a shortstop for Dixfield in the Western Maine League but quit after a year because, he was better at thinking about the game than he was at playing it.
Professor Cobb, in order to lend his teaching ''a little resonance'' joined the marine corps as an infantry and intelligence officer in 1962. As such, he trained British Royal Marines, Korean Marines, Australian Marines, Green Berets, and members of other special forces in hand-to-hand combat. Tactics, raids, demolition, and escape and evasion. He is also an accomplished musician and painter.
On the one hand, he is a throwback to the days of the eccentric boarding-school teacher. On the other, he wears Burberrys suits and can kill you thirteen different ways.
Imagine his dress for the class: Three piece suits, silk shirts, cuff links, occasional handkerchiefs, washable tattoos, occasional mustaches, and cowboy boots, spurs...... Hahaha!
Now that's one hell of a panoply.
The Professor speaks, ''My students often ask me why I dress the way I do. I tell them my mom taught me to dress up for special accasions, and I can not think of a more special occasion than an English class.
What I do not tell them is that I regard Teaching as Theater -and clothes offer the dramatic and thematic expressiveness. For a given moment, you are -or you depict, -what you wear.'' Remarkable, Sir!
Absolutely. Gatsby is a resonant essence. Like the rest of us, he is ''his platonic conception of himself,'' tinged with beauty and fear but full of dreams. Gatsby's style -all style- is part of that.
With many thanks to !WOW! for this honour. Do not miss the next post. You will find this very great Professor at his very best. Full of fun and laughter!
What an honour to be his student.
Good Night & God Bless
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Grace A Comment!