The Refectory Manager

The refectory . . . A place to nourish the soul. A place to share the savory comestibles, the sweet confections, the salty condiments of the things that matter. A place to ruminate the cud of politics. A place to rant on the railings of religion. A place to arrange the flowers of sanguine beauty. A place to pause in the repose of shelter. Welcome, my friend. The Refectory Manager

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Location: College Place, Washington, United States

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

new {

Instantiate. transitive verb: to represent (an abstraction) by a concrete instance.

In this case, instantiate a story. A story with the name "myShortStory." Spelled out in camelback notation. First letter a lowercase letter and the start of each subsequent word with an uppercase letter. There is a convention for this. This is how an "instance" of an object is named . . . identified. At least in my favorite programming language C Sharp.

This "instance" is a story, "myShortStory" of type "StoryNonFictionShort". . .. which is a genre of literature . . . Story . . . NonFiction . . . Short. That is a pattern. A model. A type. Of object. With properties.

The syntax convention tells me StoryNonFictionShort is a "type" because it begins with an uppercase letter. That is the convention of C Sharp. It makes extensive use of structured case-sensitive syntax . . . to tell the difference between an instance of an object from the type or pattern of the object itself. As the programmers frequently use as an exemplar . . . we can have a type of critter that is a dog. Type Dog (uppercase "D") has a breed, color, size, gender, name. These are the properties of a type Dog. An instance of a dog (lowercase "d") is a collie, gold, medium, female, Lassie. Another instance is a Cha-who-ee-who-ee, black and white, small, male, Peewee.


I always have that angst of pregnant expectation when I "new up" a new instance of some type of object. Be it a programming construct, an experience, a short story.

A process of instantiation was commencing.

I didn't know Walla Walla had traffic jams. Surprise to me. Trying to get onto the campus of Walla Walla Community College at 8:15 am. Instance of congestion (small "c") of type Jam (big "J").

Needed to arrive early. Find the bookstore. Get the textbook. Do a little reading so I wouldn't feel blind, naked and ignorant walking into a class I knew little about.

Couldn't find the book. Couldn't remember the name of the book. Short something. Couldn't remember the name or number of the class. So I played the elderly enfeeblement card.

They were standing at the espresso counter in the book store. Didn't know if they were staff or customers. But a pleasant young lady did turn to me and asked if I needed help.

"Well . . . yes," I pretended to stammer. " I signed up for one of those old-foggy classes and I now I can't find the book."

"Do you mean Quest? Or Club Ed?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Doesn't matter, I know where they should be. Now we will see if the teacher turned in an order for the book. Sometimes they don't tell us in time so we can't get the books here."

"Oh, the teacher said they would be there. Showed me hers at the orientation." And then I spotted it. In Short.

I had seen a pile of notebooks and on impulse, selected one. Perhaps I should at least look like I am capable of taking notes. Nice pile of snagged spiral bound, embossed gold school-name and seal on stiff hard blue cover notebooks. At least I am reassured that I am at the right school. A couple of pocket dividers on the inside. And a garish page of miniature magazine covers with blazing letters of "Save," "Student," "Mags," "Buy now pay later," with that ubiquitous 800 number. On the reverse was the order form . .. headed by "Order Today - No Credit Card Required."

Nothing like instantiating a new student into the entrapment of a magazine subscription. Gotta have that sense of belonging when you're a student.

I had seen a sign at the entrance of the book store, and now another similar big sign over there. Hand-scribbled: "Muffins: Buy 2 - get one Free."

I really was hungry. Only a cup of Old Joe ameliorated with a shot of heart-killer half and half for breakfast. But I resisted the temptation.

Discovered the class started at 9:30 and not 9:00. Another on-setting-stab of the old-age, I guess. So I went back to the Book Store and selected two of the monstrosities packaged as muffins. Six ounce muffins! Talk about portion distortion. Back in the good old days, the ideal of a respectful muffin size was 2 ounces and then it has the decency to be served warm by no less than Mrs. Leave-it-to-Beaver Cleaver herself.

Fumbling with the bowling balls, I asked the kid at the counter, "How much is one?" "Dollar forty nine." And I couldn't quite tell if that was a declarative statement or some semblance of a question as to what I might think of that price. I had this whirlwind vision of him thinking I was some vagrant with only 137 stained pennies I had collected in the last year from scouring parking lots and now had them all twisted up inside of a dirty old Wilson athletic sock.

But I did buy two of them. Muffins that is. Not socks. And found a vacant table in the atrium of what I guess is the main building at Walla Walla Community College. Proceeded to pick apart the peppermint infused bowling ball . . . peppermint chocolate chip that is. Nice. Licked my fingers clean. Put the plastic wrap and muffin paper in the trash bin with the sign that warned that no recyclables were to be stowed there.

Over at the next table . . . two young students. One had a white Apple notebook open. That one would point to the screen . . . would read to the other. And the other, sitting sideways in the chair positioned about 45 degrees at the round table from the one reading, listening, gazing intently at the reading one. That look. Of soul-bonding love . . .

But I didn't know where the class room was actually located. I had asked the clerk when I bought the text book where room "AA 0085C" might be. She looked at me kind of stunned like. And pointed off somewhere behind me . . . toward the main building . . . somewhere over there.

So a little before 9:30 I moseyed out the exit by the Book Store and walked around to the perceived Main Entrance from whence I could see an Information sign. Like a fourth grader who can't find out how to spell the word because he can't spell it to find it in the dictionary to find out how to spell it, the poor guy at the information desk didn't know where "AA 0085C" was either. But he made a pretty educated guess that it was "AAA 0185C" and gave me directions as to how to find that. And as I was finding it, I walked right past the now vacant table that witnessed the consumption of a peppermint bowling ball.

The C Sharp syntax for instantiating an object goes like this:

Type instance = new Type() { }

That is . . .

StoryNonFictionShort myShortStory = new StoryNonFictionShort() { }

where the () means it is "method" that constructs the newly instantiated object and the curly braces identify the defined block of programming code that does whatever it is that is supposed to be done with that newly instantiated entity.

It can be translated as "we will make a new instance, called "myShortStory" of the literary genre type "StoryNonFictionShort." And between the curly braces, we will add the programming lingo to make up that particular instance of short story. It will have properties such as name, language, number of pages, number of words, and of course, the story itself.

As the class commenced, my fingers found their way to the concave symbols on a virtual keyboard.

The virtual cursor was placed at the proper insertion point in the program code for instantiating a new object. A new experience. A new story.

This is a class on shorts. Short stories. And a story of type StoryNonFictionShort was bustin' out for instantiation.

To be "newed up."

My virtual keyboard began emitting the virtual clicks of mentally depressing virtual keys . . . spelling out . . . instantiating . . .

StoryNonFictionShort myShortStory = new StoryNonFictionShort() left curly brace . . .






The Refectory Manager

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Monday, January 04, 2010

The Movement

He had a bag in his hand, filled with something black, and was fiddling with the white tag on which the customer is supposed to write the number on the bin so the computer system can keep up with which products are selling.

So I offered to help.

He was mumbling something about there being no numbers on the bins. I missed the "bins" part, assuming it was a "bin" he was looking for. So I showed him the number on the bin, and asked him which one he had taken his stuff from. There were two bins with black things in it, whole dried prunes and sliced dried prunes. Both priced at $2.19 a pound. Orange sign. On sale.

But seems he put some from each bin in his bag. Same price. On sale. Why not he said.

So I started to explain how the computer needs to know how much is being sold.

He was quite amazed. Apparently that notion of modernity had never entered his head.

By then I realized he had purchased prunes! A big bag of prunes! Dried prunes! Several pounds of prunes! A mixture of prunes from two different bins . . . two different SKU numbers. Two different forms of prunes. But still prunes.

I couldn't help myself. He so reminded me of my father. I figured there had to be a sense of humor buried under that scruff somewhere.

So I asked him if he were into politics. If so, he could eat a prune and start a movement.

"Movement!" He had a genuine look of bewilderment on his face.

So I rephrased it, and tried again.

"Movement? Is that what they are doing?"

I sort of thought I knew what he was calling the "they." Obviously to me at least. . . political activists. So I stammered some nonsense about teabaggers eating prunes and starting movements.

"So that is what they do."

I was now figuring this guy really was into political movements . . . but alas, my paradigm of movement activism apparently was not moving us in the same way.

And that look of bewilderment on his face was evolving into an epiphany of radiance.

"I told her I was coming to Andy's when I talked with her on the phone. So she asked me to get her some prunes. So . . . I am getting her some prunes."

And now it was the movement in my paradigm that was moving.

"I asked her why she wanted prunes," he mumbled. But he didn't even hesitate, continued on."She said 'Cause I can't shit!'"

He turned and vigorously moved on.

And the young guy on the other side of him, empty bag in his hands, was turning shades of purple-gray.

The Refectory Manager