Memo to Professor Harold Hill

Re: Relationship with your new librarian
Date: Saturday Night, October 9, 2010

I know you like Marian. She is a cutie, sure. But here’s something you might want to look at. Is she the kind of woman who can make a commitment?

I got to wondering when I heard her sing:

All I want is a plain man. All I want is a modest man. A quiet man, a gentle man. A straightforward and honest man to sit with me in a cottage somewhere in the state of Iowa...

That’s all she wants. You could do some of that, I think. I’m not sure about sitting in the cottage, but maybe it would grow on you. But…what do you get for sitting in that cottage. Do you get a commitment from your librarian? Noooo.

The commitment, it turns out, takes something else. This is where it really helps to understand that and is a coordinating conjunction and that a coordinating conjunction joins “words, phrases, or clauses of equal rank.” You get the “equal rank” part, right, Professor? Well then, consider this.

And …if occasionally he'd ponder what makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great. Him I could love 'til I die.

So there’s a culture test, too. That’s the test you have to pass to get to “as long as we both shall live,” which is the whole idea, right? And you have to approve a 16th Century Brit and a 19th Century German. If you were a John Keats, say, or a Heinrich Heine man, things would not be looking good for you at all. That’s the thing about the culture wars. It’s not just the Brits and Germans; it’s the right Brits and Germans.

So you have to wonder about Marian. Either she doesn’t know what a coordinating conjunction is…and she’s a librarian, right?...or she’s not serious about the “as long as we both shall live” part.

So think about it. Oh, and by the way, I got “as long as we both shall live” from my librarian. Removed her from Circulation and everything. Sorry.