Employee Cover Model of the Month: Douglas Grudzina
Name: Douglas
Edward Grudzina
Nicknames: Other
than the ever-creative “Doug,” none that could be printed on a general-audience
website. (Some of them are not very nice, either).
Job at
PH: My title is “Merchandiser/New Product Development Specialist,” which
means I pretty much sit in my cubicle and write and edit Advanced Placement Teaching Units and Multiple Perspectives Lesson Guides. Sometimes I get to e-mail the
writers, and sometimes they let me talk to people on the phone.
Book
Cover He’s Featured On: I’m Petruchio on the Literary Touchstone Classic edition of The Taming of the Shrew (photography and Art by Wendy Smith). I'm also Claudius in the reflection of Hamlet's knife on the Literary Touchstone Classic edition of Hamlet.(photography and Art by Senior Graphic Designer Jen Mendoza).
Favorite
Word(s)/Catch Phrases: “Wow, you’re telling me this almost as if you
think I’m really interested…”
Favorite
Book: Moshiach by Douglas Grudzina,
but if you mean a book that’s actually been published, I’d have to go with
either Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities.
Favorite
Children’s Book: Despite its ultimately misandrist theme, I’ve
always liked The Little Engine that Could.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a
pretty close second.
Favorite Under-Taught Book: Moshiach by Douglas Grudzina, but
if you mean a book that’s actually been published (or in this case produced),
I’d have to say Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. For many years it had
become almost a cliché in high school curricula, but too many people miss the
dark edges and see it as a “simple, folksy” play when it’s really very
cynical—almost existential, with a dash of Buddhist samsara thrown in. It’s really a powerful work.
Favorite Author: Douglas Grudzina. But if you mean published author, then I’d go with Charles Dickens. Thornton Wilder is up there, too.
Favorite Poems: “Spring and Fall: to a Young
Child” by Gerard Manley Hopkins; “Dover Beach”
by Matthew Arnold
Favorite
Movie Based on a Book: You know, I kind of like The Hours with Meryl
Streep and Nicole Kidman. I also thought they did a good job adapting Daniel
Wallace’s Big Fish.
Favorite
Band/Music: That’s a hard one because anyone who knows me will
tell you I am the most out-of-touch-with-popular-culture person they know!
“Favorite types of music” might be classical, Christmas music, what they call
“standards” …
Favorite
Food: These are
hard questions! I like just about everything that’s ever been placed in front
of me! I’ve always said that if there’s anything
that any culture legitimately
considers food, chances are I’m going to like it!
Favorite PH Product: Anything
I’ve written. Seriously, I think the Multiple
Perspectives Lesson Guides are awesome!
Teachers who haven’t tried them yet are really missing out on something—well,
their students especially are missing out.
Favorite Literary Quote: “Some [men] are born great; some
achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
One Random
Fact: The axial tilt of the Earth varies
between 22.1° and 24.5° within any 42,000-year period. Right now it is approximately
23.37° and decreasing. (I don’t know whether that has any impact on Global
Warming.)
…Or did you mean a random fact
about me? How about: The first time I
had my blood tested, they gave it a B+, and I thought it deserved at least an
A-. (But at least I didn’t get a 0!)
Thoughts about the Photo Shoot: The Taming of the Shrew was one of the first ones using
PWH people as cover models, so we all (“Kate” aka Samantha Clark, Prestwick House Purchasing agent, photographer Wendy,
and I) just sort of made up what we were doing as we went along.
I think
ultimately, the poses they chose of “Kate” and me were not even taken at the
same time; we were photographed separately and photoshopped together.
