Notes From My Knapsack 5-27-07
Jeff Gill

Denison & My Name Is Earl

Many of you know that Steve Carell of “The Office” went to Denison, living here in Licking County for four years.

Usually on right before that show is “My Name Is Earl,” and as far as I know there are no local connections to that program (except some major déjà vu moments while viewing).

But I want to bookend our graduation season glance at the large inscriptions on the College Street campus gateways with an “Earl” connection of sorts.

Along with Earl and his brother Randy there are a number of recurring characters, including Earl’s ex-wife Joy, and a lady she does not get along with at all named Catalina.

Catalina’s immigration status is, um, currently under debate in Washington. Stay tuned to that… Anyhow, Catalina is pretty fluent in English, putting her a step ahead of most illegal aliens in the US, but occasionally, mainly when her character is angry, she launches into Espanol. Having taken Latin and German in high school, I have only scraps picked up on Southwestern trips and in reading the menu at Taco Bell.

But those years of Latin and culinary clues gave me just enough to prick up my ears when I was watching a re-run of an Earl episode.

In a first season episode called "Barn Burner,” it appears that Catalina is cursing out Joy in Spanish. It didn’t sound quite right, though. Later on, I did some Googling about on the internet, and found out something I think is quite clever: what she’s saying is "I want to thank the Latino audience that tunes in to watch the show every week. And to those of you who aren't Latino, I want to congratulate you for learning another language."

Catalina does the same trick, it turns out, at season’s end for both the first and this most recent season, and we can expect more hidden surprises and in-jokes with season three picked up by the NBC network.

Back to those distinguished looking campus gateways at Denison! Down by the intersection of Burg St. and College is the final pair of inscriptions, one long known to be a Ben Franklin classic about time being the stuff life is made of, and don’t waste it.

Opposite is a statement that has long been listed in college lore as “unattributed,” which just means that somewhere since President Emory Hunt picked it out a century ago, no one has been sure where it came from.

It’s kind of appropriate that the obscurity of the quote is tied to the quotation, which says in full “Languages are no more than the keys of sciences; He who despises one, slights the other.” The source is hard to track down because the original is in French, from an author named Jean de la Bruyere. La Bruyere was a student of Pascal and Montaigne, a contemporary of Racine and Corneille, and over to the English side of the channel, he strongly influenced Joseph Addison with his “The Characters, or Manners of the Present Age,” where the quote derives.

Addison went on to create the idea of short essays in cheap, public settings like broadsheets and newspapers, with a connection over time not preventing the enjoyment of any one.

Or, you could just say that Addison invented the role of newspaper columnist!

La Bruyere wanted, like Catalina, for us to appreciate the importance of having knowledge and familiarity with different languages. Emory Hunt wanted Denison students and any passers-by to see quotes affirming hard work (George Crabbe), aspiration (Longfellow’s Augustine quote), good use of time (Franklin), and the value of learning languages (La Bruyere).

In that way, the four quotes on the two gates from lower to upper campus make a perfect summation of what a liberal arts education is all about.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he speaks no French at all, sadly. Parleys-vooz with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.