About the Blog and Blogger
David Kahn has taught English at Sandy Spring Friends School since 1981, introducing students to the joys of, among others, Beowulf, Chaucer, and Gogol, and beating them about the head and shoulders when their pronouns lacked antecedents or their participles dangled. He has an undergraduate degree from Carleton College, and an MDiv degree from the Earlham School of Religion, where his focus was campus ministry and the literature of the intertestamental period. He said this when asked to describe his intent for this blog: One of my heroes, Richard Mitchell, editor of “The Underground Grammarian” (a sort of ur-blog, from back when blogs took the form of newsletters) spoke of a worm that is inhabiting our brains and putting us slowly to sleep. It is the worm of “insubstantial words, hazy and disembodied, [that] have fled utterly from things and ideas.” Mitchell said he was trying to stay awake, and wrote in part to help others do the same. That seems like a pretty good goal to me.
Gabrielle Smith said,
January 30, 2010 @ 3:23 pm
Does he still carry the cane? Back in the 80′s, the cane was an instrumental learning tool when it came to Moby Dick or the utopian movement of the Renaissance Period. Thanks David!
ssfsblog said,
February 5, 2010 @ 12:27 pm
Gabby! What news from the long distant past? I’m probably not supposed to use this blog thing for personal communication, am I? Send me an e-mail. As to the cane – yes, it is still an, as you say “instrumental learning tool.” I even have two now. Things have changed a bit, though; they don’t let me hit the students and more.