C'est la vie!

I was SHOCKED today to read in the New York Times that the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss had just died at 100. I thought he was dead when I studied his works back in 1973!

It was a less-than-golden time at the University of Minnesota, although we students were content, having nothing to compare it to. Many of my classes included hundreds of students and two were ‘taught’ by pre-recorded lectures on a movie screen or TV. I jumped at a chance to finish my language requirement with a small class related to French culture—to be taught entirely in French.

Although I had studied the language in high school and the first semester of college, I soon discovered that I understood almost nothing of the lecture or discussions. As the required books were all by Claude Lévi-Strauss, I concluded that the class had something to do with him (whoever he was), but beyond that I had NO idea what was going on (not surprising, as CLS wrote some heavy stuff—I could barely understand his NYT obit today).

After a week of making up little stories in my head about what the teacher was saying, I changed my grade choice to S/N (satisfactory/non-satisfactory), sure that if I got less than an ‘A’ I would never get into dental school and my life would be ruined.

One day, the teacher announced (in English) that he wanted us to see some avant garde French films showing at the Bell Museum the next day. Moreover, our entire grade was to be based on an essay about one of these movies. Unfortunately, I was scheduled to work that evening and I knew my boss would not accept taking time off to go to some artsy-fartsy foreign films. So my mother kindly attended the event on my behalf and took very detailed and literal notes about very weird movies.

Punch line of the story—I wrote such a wonderful essay about a movie I hadn’t seen that I earned an ‘A’ in the class—and got an ‘S.”

Point of the story—I have always hated Claude Lévi-Strauss and would have been living a much more uneasy life all these years if I knew he was still around to torture me.

The party's over

Every spring our next-door neighbor Rich sets up his big white circus tent in his driveway and starts a six-month garage sale. He finally conceded to the Minnesota weather and closed for the season. I found this flotsam hanging on his garage rather poignant. Lei, anyone?