San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association The SJSU Emeritus and Retired Faculty (ERFA) Newsletter Association Spring 1-1-2009 SJSU ERFA News, Early Spring 2009 San Jose State University, Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/erfa Part of the Higher Education Commons Recommended Citation San Jose State University, Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association, "SJSU ERFA News, Early Spring 2009" (2009). Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association (ERFA) Newsletter. Paper 7. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/erfa/7 This Newsletter is brought to you for free and open access by the The SJSU Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association (ERFA) Newsletter by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. EARLY SPRING 2009 • VOLUME 22, NUMBer 4 EFA Dwight Bentel on a 1930s visit to the Amargosa Valley. He's changed . but not much. See Page 7 for more. A Newsletter of the SanNews Jose State University Emeritus Faculty Association EFA President’s Message The Future of Reading By Don Keesey the Oxford American which, among the entire Library of Congress by (English) other shortcomings, is skimpy on pressing a few buttons. So accept Your friendly booksellers at etymologies. But it’s only a matter the invitation to view the Kindle and Amazon are inviting you to view on of time. you will see the future of reading. the Web a six-minute video touting Of course you’ll have to pay You will also see the death of the second edition of their e-book for your portable library and for the book as we know it. I find reader, the Kindle 2. Unlike its anything else you download from this prospect at once exciting, competitor from Sony, the Kindle Amazon, and at 10 bucks a book depressing, and decidedly doesn’t even pretend to look bemusing. But I can’t decide like a book. Eight by five which muse is chiefly inches and a third of an inch at work. Is it Tragedy or thick, it looks like what it is—a Comedy? Surely Memory tablet. The screen displays has her hand in as well. In a sharp black text against a short, I have mixed feelings. white background and the Those of us who have print size (though not yet the haunted libraries and have contrast) can be adjusted to lived surrounded by books your comfort. If you’re still will have our physical and not comfortable, you can sit mental landscapes seriously back, turn on the sound, and deranged. It is depressing to imagine a world in which have the device read the text Amazon's Kindle to you. This little tablet is able to the physical book has largely store 1,500 e-books and if these this can add up. But meanwhile, disappeared and our great libraries don’t include the text you want at Google and several university have become mausoleums. Yet the moment, you can wirelessly consortia are steadily working certainly they will have no additions. download any of Amazon’s toward their goal of putting all Already everything that gets printed tens of thousands of e-books, printed texts into digital form. I is created first in cyberspace. Very magazines, and newspapers. The have no idea how the economics soon we will just skip the print Kindle also includes a dictionary. of all this will shake out, but I’m phase entirely (Stephen King is This, alas, is not yet the massive convinced the day cannot be far already trying this) and new books and marvelous Oxford English off when you will be able to sit will be printed on paper only at the Dictionary but its anemic cousin, down with your tablet and access behest of wealthy eccentrics like those Renaissance nobles who Friday, Thursday, insisted on elegant handwritten copies even after printed texts May 8, 2009 October 22, 2009 became available. But then, as that example reminds Spring Luncheon at Fall Luncheon at us, the book as we know it hasn’t the Villages. Mariani’s Restaurant, been around forever. What we call Speaker: Santa Clara a book is a gathering of sheets of SJSU President, Jon Whitmore. (Continued on page two) EFA News 2 Early Spring 2009 President’s Message The Future of Reading (Continued from page one) weaving will save a lot of paper, a or webber (masculine), variants of paper sewn or glued to a spine word that goes back to the Ancients’ the more common weaver, who ply and covered with cardboard. But papyrus, the plant they cut into their virtual looms to fabricate the the book the classical world knew strips and then wove into flat sheets World Wide Web. And a wondrous was a roll of velum or papyrus. You on which they wrote their texts. Text web it is. Soon, I predict, you will be would scroll your roll down or up itself, a word long favored among able to prop your tablet before you, and it could be any length judged literary theorists to emphasize the arrange the light and font to your to be convenient. So, for instance, written aspects of language and taste, set your automatic scroll to the 15,000 lines of the Iliad were to foreground the intertextuality or your preferred speed, and—if you divided into 24 rolls or “books,” interwoven features of all discourse, can resist turning over every other one for each letter of the Greek can be traced to an Indo-European word to see what’s underneath— alphabet. This was a great advance root that gives us both the Greek read any text you want, hands free. over the Babylonian clay tablet. techne (art or skill) and the Latin The future of the book is definitely Now we are returning to the tablet texere (generally, to fabricate, dim, but the future of reading looks and, as any computer user knows, technically, to weave). Now it has to be (adjustably) bright. we are again doing a lot of scrolling. again become a verb, and some We already have available at little of us are texting all the time, even or no cost a long roll of digital text. (shudder) while driving. But if our It’s That Time Of Year! Sooner or later all the world’s texts airy texts no longer have the fabric The EFA Executive Board is will be woven into one infinitely of fine papyrus, or even the texture looking for members who might long roll, accessible on your plastic of coarse newsprint, they have be interested in serving with the tablet any time, any place. Again, the advantage that they can be organization. The Board meets it’s only a matter of time. easily woven into that long scroll on campus from 10:00am to We say this as if time were a in cyberspace. (Cyber is also a lot noon, on the first Monday of each small matter. But in this case, of fun—look it up.) This is the task month, except June, July, August matter itself is disappearing. This of the modern webster (feminine) and January. The meetings are casual, dealing primarily with EFA Officers, 2008-2009 maintaining the association President -- Don Keesey and planning events for the Vice Pres. -- Bobbye Gorenberg membership. The offices to be Secretary -- Lonna Smith filled this term are as follows: Vice Treasurer -- Ted Norton President (to serve as President Members at Large -- Bob Gliner in 2010-11); Secretary; an David Schwarz Academic Senate representative; Dennis Wilcox and one Member-at-Large. In Academic Senate -- Peter Buzanski addition, the Nominations Past President -- Charlene Archibeque Committee will recommend to Ex Officio Members the Board appointments to the Membership Wayne Savage Communication Sebastian Cassarino Ex Officio positions listed in the Newsletter Gene Bernardini (Editor) and Clyde Lawrence (Layout/Design) box to the left. If you might like to Consolations David Schwarz be a candidate for any of these Activities Dolores Escobar-Hamilton Archivist Clifford Johnson positions, please email Bobbye ERFA Reps Beverly Jensen Adnan Daoud Gorenberg at drbobbyedg@ Evelyn Neufeld Bob Wilson Webmaster Carol Christensen ERFA yahoo.com for details. Do so by Member-at-Large Dave Elliott the easy-to-remember date of EFA Office April 15. MacQuarrie Hall 438D At the Spring Luncheon, which Telephone (408) 924-2478 doubles as our annual EFA Email [email protected] Business Meeting, a slate of Visit the EFA Website at www.sjsu.edu/emeritusfaculty/ candidates will be recommended Views and opinions expressed in this EFA Newsletter are those of the to the members in attendance. contributors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editor or of Nominations are also open to the San Jose State University. floor at that time. EFA News Early Spring 2009 3 February’s Academic Senate report By Ted Norton The Senate heard a lengthy if departments disagree with the This was a short meeting. report on the Chancellor’s edict actions of BOGS regarding GE, Although I was entitled to vote as that all classroom materials and they may appeal to the Curriculum the stand-in EFA senator, there instruction-related university and Research Committee. was very little to vote on. Not one websites must be made accessible To deal with the problem of resolution was proposed. to disabled students. Our plan for salary increases for faculty who President Whitmore said he hoped compliance has been approved, have reached the top step of their that the upcoming federal stimulus and real progress has been pay grade, the Senate voted on bill would provide for increases in made.