Bone marrow drive a commendable display of community compassion

Tuesday’s story, “”UA Aids in the Search for Marrow,”” announced to students, staff, and alumni of the Big U that a faculty member, Kris Weatherly, was recently diagnosed with leukemia. The fact that volunteers put on a bone marrow drive in search for a match for this man is incredible.

This last year, I lost two very important people in my life to leukemia and wish they had had more time. One of my high school friends was diagnosed about two years ago and just like here at the UA, students and staff came together to put on a marrow drive in hopes of finding a match. There are no words to express the emotions I feel knowing that an entire university community has come together to not only help one person but also to be put on a registry to possibly save others lives as well.

As a student at the UA, I am very proud that our campus community is acting so nobly. Thank you to the staff, faculty, alumni, administration and students!

Kaitlyn Zobel

undeclared freshman

Shakespeare lacked necessary familiarity with noble life to write ‘his’ works

It is with bemusement and sadness that I read your recent editorial on elitism and the Shakespeare Authorship controversy. (“”Supreme Court in a tussle over Shakespeare,”” April 21, 2009) My bemusement arises from the fact that anyone who wanders into the minefield of this debate with inadequate defenses is asking for broadsides from any number of quarters. Unfortunately, a brief reading of a Wall Street Journal article provides little armor, and virtually no cogent facts, for the uninitiated. This debate has been raging since the Bardolatry fad of the nineteenth century and has piqued the interest of intelligent people across all walks of life since. Mark Twain, for example, devoted an entire book to the subject, concluding that the Stratford man (usually spelled in some variant of Shaxspere) could not possibly have produced the works attributed to him. Other notable doubters include: Walt

Whitman, Charles Dickens, Henry James and Charlie Chaplin. In 1987 several justices of the U.S Supreme Court heard lawyers argue the case in a moot session to a split verdict. Members of the court have continued to comment on the subject since.

The condescending use of the italicized “”possible”” in your editorial clearly displays an ignorance of the subject matter. Despite orthodox Stratfordian claims that the matter is settled fact, it is entirely unclear that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. A complete refutation is not possible in this brief rebuttal, but it is clear that the Stratford man’s incumbency is on shaky ground which is growing only shakier. I will not attempt to enumerate the laundry list of facts and odd coincidences that undermine the current incumbent’s candidacy as there are many solid scholarly books and journal articles for the reader to explore and decide for himself. I will highlight only one. Recent scholarly debate is raging on the apparent recusant Roman Catholic sentiments of William of Stratford. The implications of this – the poet laureate of Anglican Elizabethan England being a closet papist – will prove, I believe, to be the fatal breach in the Stratfordian fortress that will ultimately bring the whole artifice crashing down. It is clear that someone else wrote these plays and poems.

The elitism charge is one that has been used to dismiss those of us who doubt (in full disclosure, I have Oxfordian sympathies) without need to actually debate the subject. The claim is made that those who deny William of Stratford his proper place are either elitists or people who just don’t understand the true nature of genius. The elitism argument is a red herring. The question has never been can a “”commoner”” write works of unparallel genius? Of course they can. The question in this case is: could a commoner have written these works? A close look at the canon demonstrates that the author had an intimate familiarity with so many areas of noble life that could have come only from direct immersion in that world. It is not the kind of knowledge that could come from books but only through the living of a life steeped in the values and experience of the ruling class. Anyone who understands the process of writing knows that authors are inspired by their worlds and seek inspiration and content from it.

In the Stratfordian world, however, genius becomes something so ineffable and distant that it must be placed on a pedestal far beyond the potential grasp of mere mortals. We are left only to wonder at and adore the achievements of others since we cannot ever hope to express our own creative genius fully. I’m sure that this may be comforting to many who wish to justify their own failed aspirations and to argue for their limitations by ascribing it all to the mystery of genius. This is the real sadness for me. I would have liked to have thought that at a first class university we would not only be seeking the truth of this literary mystery but that we would also hold up the example of a true genius, a man who lived up to his full potential and who gave the English speaking world its most wonderful and transcendent literary legacy. Instead of coming to know and appreciate an actual warm-blooded human being with both talents and flaws we are left to mundane arguments about political and intellectual elites, all the while shrinking from our own genius. A true shame.

Rob Perry

human resources manager