The Yale Herald » joe

Mory’s Grand Opening slated for August 25th; now taking reservations

joe — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:23:26 +0000

After 18 months of closure and renovations, Mory’s is finally ready for its big reveal. I, a loyal member since Parents’ Weekend 2007, called this afternoon to check up on the much-beloved Temple Bar, and found that they are already taking reservations for their soft opening, August 21-23, during which time they’ll be previewing their full menu and bar. The grand opening is set for August 25; from then on, the club will be open normal business hours. As announced earlier, student membership fees have been dropped to just $15 until graduation, so it looks like a good deal even for rising seniors. Existing memberships will, of course, be honored. More information is available in their colorful new brochure.

Hipster farmers (who went to Yale) are still news to CNN

joe — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:01:40 +0000

It’s 2010. The hipster/farmer story is old hat. Even the glacial New York Times had already covered it by 2008 (and, for that matter, in 1972). But apparently, it’s still actionable news at CNN—if there’s a cute Yalie onto whom they can hook the story. American Morning’s Carol Costello profiled Roy Skeen ’04 today as an example of an investment banker who gave up the sweet life in favor of sweet corn, starting an organic farm in Maryland. At first, Costello seems dubious about Skeen using his BA in History to work as a farmer, but when then Skeen mollifies her when he cites a historical fact about America (he says 80% of Americans farmed 100 years ago). The segment’s tone eventually devolves into ”who understands young people, much less Yale-educated young people?”

But even the Yale professional slant falls flat, ultimately. First, the Yale Sustainable Food Project has been around since 2000, and even the Yale Farm was already open and selling vegetables by the time Skeen was a senior. Skeen himself wasn’t, perhaps, your typical Harvester; he was a goalie on the Lacrosse team, and he did work for a bit in investment banking. And apparently he said his favorite food in college was Naples Pizza. But according his 2001 50 Most profile, he was FOOT leader, so it also isn’t totally shocking he became a farmer.

Bottom line: do your research before busting out the befuddlement next time, CNN.

Good news on the legendary professor front

joe — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:38:35 +0000

A quick scan of the Fall 2010 classes shows relatively few changes from years past; most of the big names you expect are there, and many of the courses have been offered in recent years. One promising trend that pops out? Sterling Professors Donald Kagan and Harold Bloom, who’ve both been in and out of the classroom due to illness in the past several years, are back in a big way. Kagan (a former dean of the College) is teaching his landmark Intro to Greek History and his revered seminar on Athenian Democracy. Bloom, meanwhile, is taking a break from the classes he’d taught for years during fall semester, The Art of Reading a Poem and Shakespeare: Histories, Comedies and Romances. Instead, he’s offering “Shakespearian Character: Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, Cleopatra” (his four favorite characters in Shakespeare) and “Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, Hart Crane” (the four American poets he thinks of as the strongest). Note to all: I will kill to get into the latter class. Don’t stand in my way.

OCI is up: Fall 2010 classes are now live

joe — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:23:17 +0000

This just in: yale.edu/oci has finally been updated with this fall’s courses. Spring isn’t there yet, strangely, but fall is a go. Get your Excel spreadsheets ready!

To come: analysis of the offerings from the Bullblog’s Nerd Squad.

UPDATE: Spring 2011 is also now up. Exciting!

C.O. Jones Fire: East Rock tequila bar temporarily shuttered

joe — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:14:32 +0000

C.O. Jones, the raunchily-named and much-lauded Mexican eatery/tequila dispensary on State Street, suffered a fire several weeks ago, and is temporarily closed for repairs. The cause of the fire is as yet unknown, but the Bullblog’s Fire Protection analysts have said that New Haven’s high temperatures during last week’s hugely dangerous heat wave may have been enough to put some of CO Jones’ 130 types of tequila past the flash point, and thereby spontaneously combust. The restaurant did not pick up multiple phone calls to confirm the analysts’ suspicions, but a voicemail greeting claimed C.O. Jones will be open again for business in “the second or third week of July.”

Two new wildly acclaimed books by Yale authors (that you might actually want to read)

joe — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:29:40 +0000

Brilliance is a dime a dozen at Yale; so is publication. Professors write startlingly insightful treatises all the time—and that’s not to even start on the dozens (hundreds?) or dissertations Yale PhD’s release every year. But academic books are hardly fun reads (except, perhaps, to already-devoted acolytes of certain cultic professors). So it’s actually nice, though by no means shocking, when a Yale-related person writes a book I want to read. Just in time for summer, here are two such books:

Matterhorn, which actually came out in April, was written over a 30 years by a Yale- and Vietnam War-vet, Karl Marlantes. I’m not a big Vietnam War fan (take that as you will), so I approached the book with a bit of skepticism, but any doubt I had was cast aside when I saw this:

Chapter after chapter, battle after battle, Marlantes pushes you through what may be one of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam — or any war. It’s not a book so much as a deployment, and you will not return unaltered.

Another review rather non-chalantly compared it to The Naked and the Dead and The Iliad. And it’s been a mainstay on the Times Bestseller list since its release, so you know it’s not going to be turgid or unreadable or anything. Bottom line: read it. After the Millenium Trilogy, if you must, but there’ s a lot of summer left.

The second book is helping convince me Harold may soon be dethroned as the most prominent Bloom on campus—by Psych professor Paul (sorry, not quite yet, Michael). His new How Pleasure Works hasn’t been quite as big a seller as Marlantes’s book, but it’s made a respectable showing (low triple digits on the Amazon bestseller list), and it, too, got a positive review from the Times (“No advice here about how to become happier by organizing your closets; Bloom is after something deeper than the mere stuff of feeling good.”) And hey—maybe reading it will help me figure out why I so loathe psychology classes!

What’s in store for SIS?

joe — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:51:52 +0000

I just tried to log in to yale.edu/sis, and was stopped by this message:

Student Systems will be unavailable from 5:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, July 8th through 12:00 noon EST on Monday, July 12th, due to an extensive upgrade. We apologize for the inconvenience.

“Extensive upgrade”—wow! Right now, the interface feels like it was designed by a blind, possibly starving, chemical engineer living in some war-torn post-Soviet state—in the mid-90s. So any improvement will be much appreciated. Any guesses for what they might do? And if you were the Grandmaster of the SIS, how would you change things?

Yale finds priceless art in a basement

joe — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:50:19 +0000

So apparently, some janitor or curator or art history (ahem, History of Art) major discovered an early painting by Velazquez in the basement of the YUAG. It’s from 1617, 84 years before Yale was founded, and was given to Yale in 1925. The painting (“The Education of the Virgin”) was unsigned, and so had long been attributed to “Unknown,” a relatively obscure artist who lived in Seville in the 17th Century. It’s unclear how much the piece is worth, especially given that its BASEMENT HIDING PLACE led to some water damage, but experts have cited numbers in the millions. What other priceless artifacts might be hiding in the caverns of Yale? Other than endangered species taxidermy and human remains, that is.

SHOCKING REPORT: Rudy’s to move into Ahimsa space

joe — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:49:17 +0000

According to the New Haven Independent, Rudy’s, New Haven’s most beloved purveyor of beer and frites for 76 years, is moving to a new home down Howe Street, in the old Ahimsa space on the corner of Chapel. They say they’ll move most of the furniture (carved benches, pool table) that makes the space distinctive. While I worry about the general degradation of our national character, I won’t raise too much of a fuss about this one: the bar is now two blocks closer to my apartment. I’d guess art students, who will now have a convenient alternative to the vile Sullivan’s, will join me in my cautious optimism—though townies and traditionalists will no doubt cry foul.

Yalies plunder New York for bylines, if not cash [LIST]

joe — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:58:16 +0000

It’s not news that most Yalies keep themselves busy in the summer. Some stay in New Haven doing science; others go abroad to help save the World. But the enduring popularity of the Yale Club of New York’s Thursday Happy Hour proves that many choose to stay in the tri-state area, frittering the rare Northeast warmth away in air-conditioned pillars of industry as interns. For the Yaliterati, this means working for free in journalism. The lucky few are even allowed to write! Here are five such budding talents, most of whom have sprung from the fertile loins of the Bullblog’s archenemy, the YDN:

1. THOMAS KAPLAN: You know his name. You know his byline at the YDN. Now get to know his work at the New York Times! He’s interning at the Sports desk this summer, and has already written eight storie s, including one, from this morning, that made it to the front page of the Sports section.

2. HALEY COHEN: New New [LOL] Journal EIC Haley Cohen has inherited Kaplan’s post as a blog intern at Vanity Fair, and has been writing about a pithy article per day for the past two weeks. Keep it up, Haley, and you might get an offer from the Bullblog one of these days!

3. EMMA ALLEN: Word on the street says Emma may be one of the few Millenials ever who has secured an actual job writing. Until we see a notarized copy of the offer letter, though, we’re going to lump her in with the rest of these lemmings and admire her sparkling prose at artinfo.com without being jealous.

4. THE NYO DUO: Considering their tremendous talents, it’s really unfair to give Esther Zuckerman and Will Alden just one slot, but I said five, so there it is. These two fine journalists are reporting on all things New York alongside their YDN predecessor Molly Fischer at the Observer.

5. SARAH YAGER: Considered by some the most competetent and even-keeled person ever to set foot in the Herald office (she was a Managing Editor and then an Executive Editor this past year, and who knows what else before that), Yager is spending the summer interning for Slate. She’s already written one blog post for XX, and everyone at the Bullblog is eagerly awaiting more!

Bonus! Though not in New York, scene editor Jay Dockendorf, one of the Bullblog’s favorite people, has been doing killer work at the online-only New Haven Independent.

Found other rising stars? Post names and links in the comment section.

[Full disclosure: many of these people are friends of mine. But there aren't all that many English majors at Yale at any one time!!!]