No Immunity from Clogging in the Verbisphere

       As beautiful and well written as Joff Gottlieb's obituary is in yesterday's L.A. Times, journalistic thoroughness sometimes poses nearly insuperable challenges.

       I speak of a paragraph consisting of a long single sentence, which concluded with "said Rabbi Bradley Artson, the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean's Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles."  There's nothing there to actually fault despite Rabbi Artson apparently being within all that verbiage, as I understand it, a "Chair" and the last part being exclusively "of," "at," and "in" prepositional phrases, four in a row.

       It does get to be crowded, and what's most awkward is the use of several names and a possessive noun "Dean's" to modify that innocent noun "Chair."

       Oh, were it only somehow avoidable.