Bernie shopping lists

When Bernie goes grocery shopping, he makes sure to hit Big Y, Stop and Shop, Trader Joe's, and each CVS. He leaves Whole Checkbook to my mother. He especially loves Big Y, their BOGO's, and telling us all about it when he gets home. It also explains why we have 44 bags of tortilla chips and cheeze-its, but nothing else in the house when he gets back.

Bernie and LL Bean

I returned to the Herst this weekend for a wedding. I found some Bernie Notes, reunited with my 4th and 6th grade teachers, and I was THISCLOSE to Bruce Springsteen and his wife at the Newton Shaw's. My life is now complete.

Bernie notepads and health plans

1. Switching health plans during annual enrollment = Major Drama and Preparation.
2. These notepads are from before I was born

The man himself

Bernie Quotes from the Boston Globe on student engagment in the classroom:

Bernard J. Morzuch, a UMass Amherst professor of resource economics, studied the faces of his students this summer, often toggling between the photos and the evening's baseball scores. If he could summon their names after being immersed in box scores, he had them down.

"That was the acid test," he said.

For years, Morzuch learned his students' names as the semester went along. This year, he already has most of them down.

Morzuch said he stunned some of the 350 students in his introductory statistics course last spring by calling on them. He called only on students whose names he knew, of course, but students didn't know that.

"You call two or three by their first name, they assume you've memorized the whole class," he said with a chuckle.

And the occasional cold call transforms the classroom dynamic, professors say. Students sit up straighter and may even forgo their habitual Web browsing in class if there's a chance they'll suddenly be called on by name and thrust into the spotlight.

"I want students to get over the mentality that there is safety in numbers," Morzuch said.