Shedding Tears

A sad thing happened this morning. I was driving one of my cats, Tippecanoe, to our vet to have his stitches removed. About 2 miles from the vet's office on a stretch of four lane I felt a sudden thud under one wheel and in the rear view window I could see a small black cat with legs flailing.

Living in a rural area I'm very consciously always on the lookout scanning the shoulders for animals, everything from deer and bears to cats and dogs may suddenly dash across the road. This time I didn't see anything before the sickening thump. There wasn't a good place to turn when I saw what happened so I quickly drove on to my vet where I could leave Tippecanoe and go back to the scene. Every moment that I had to wait before the receptionist got off the phone and I could tell her what I needed to do was torture. 

I hopped back in my car and flew back to the scene.  I did a u-turn across the four-lane and pulled up on the shoulder next to the little cat. It was immediately obvious that the poor thing was dead, but I couldn't just leave it there to be run over again and again. So watching for a break in the traffic I ran out and scooped the little limp thing up in a towel and brought it back to the car.

Right there on the side of the road holding that limp little body in a towel I began to sob uncontrollably. I climbed behind the wheel and shook and cried for several minutes before starting the engine again. I probably wasn't really in any shape to be driving, but did so anyway, tears running down my face, sobbing and moaning. 

And I realized right away, that as sad as the situation was, I wasn't really crying for the dead kitty. The death of the little cat had just simply been the mechanism to release all the pain, fear and sadness of the past four months. I was crying for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd,  and for all the more than 140,000 people that we've lost to COVID 19. I was crying for the losses of connection and dislocations that the pandemic has caused all of us, and I was crying for all the fears and uncertainties that we face about the fate of our democratic society.   

In Memory of Friends Long Gone

Twice in the week I've had reason to think a former student and long time friend Bradford Clay Jones who died twenty years ago this spring. First when the Supreme Court announced their decision on same sex marriage last Friday and  then again on Monday when I learned that the community college system that I serve (KCTCS) had nominated me for a state-wide teaching award (my academic dean says I've "won" it, but officially I've only been nominated, and I like to hold off celebration until things are official).  Both times when I heard the news I thought of Clay and wished that he had lived to see it. 

Clay was a student in my SOC 101 Introductory Sociology course at the University of Kentucky in the spring term of 1981. Clay had come to UK from Russellville, Kentucky a small farming community in the western part of the state. He came with his best friend, a red headed freckled young farmer, whose name I sadly can no longer remember although I can see his face as clear as it was yesterday. They joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity together, took their general education classes together including sociology, but had different majors and different career/life paths. Clay was brilliant, articulate, wild, crazy, daring, fun, charming. He was clearly a leader among his fraternity brothers.   Clay got his degree in education from the University of Kentucky's department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion.

After graduation Clay entered the Air Force  as a 1st Lieutenant and began corresponding regularly with me. He wrote long chatty letters about work and life. He loved serving his country and was posted on first at Dover, Delaware and then near Kansas City. His job involved providing healthy exercise and activity programs for people stationed at the AF Bases. 

Clay also had an active personal life outside work. He participated with local community theater groups in the communities near the AF bases where he was stationed. I remember how much fun he had with a production of Oklahoma! Although Clay had explored and experimented with his sexual identity in college, it was not until more than a year after graduation that Clay finally "came out" to himself and to friends and family, but not of course to the USAF. This was well before "Don't ask, Don't tell."

While stationed near Kansas City, Clay met the love of his life Gene and entered into a committed relationship. A local minister officiated at Clay and Gene's vows which they considered just as binding as if they had been legal. Rather than face being separated from Gene by the Air Force posting him outside the U.S. Clay allowed the Air Force to learn of his sexual orientation and discharge him in 1984. 

Clay entered the Master of Public Administration in Nonprofit Management at the University Missouri, Kansas City and received his MPA in 1986.  In 1989 he became the Executive director Kansas division American Cancer Society.

Diagnosed as HIV positive in the late 1980's Clay maintained his health for a number of years.  He advocated for AIDS research as a board member of the Kansas City AIDS Research Consortium. In the early 1990's his HIV infection became full-blown AIDS. He suffered among other things from a histoplasmosis infection that spread from his lungs throughout his body. In June of 1995 I received the sad news from Clay's spouse Gene that AIDS had taken its toll and Clay died May 1, 1995. 

I wish that Clay had lived to see same sex marriage legalized across the nation; for him and Gene to have had the full legal rights of married couples. They were married for a decade before Clay's death and yet Gene received none of the benefits a married person should have on the death of his spouse. 

I also wish that Clay could have lived to see me receive this state-wide teaching award for "inspiring" Kentucky students to become contributing members of society. Clay was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of my teaching career.  I met him while I was still an "apprentice" graduate student instructor, and his friendship over the next 14 years was very influential in my development as a teacher.  By no means the last student to become a life-long friend, Clay was the first. 

Thanks for the memories, Clay. 

Nuclear Nightmares

When I was growing up in a blue collar neighborhood in California I was aware that my experience of the world was very different than that of the children around me. I was preoccupied with issues and concerns to which most of my neighborhood playmates seemed oblivious.  A few decades ago I read Annie Dillard's An American Childhood, and was taken aback to discover that Dillard too had little awareness as a child of the international and national economic and political issues of the 1950's and early 1960's.  

One topic obsessed me more than any other between 1956 and 1963: nuclear war. My father possessed a huge volume of photographs collected by Life Magazine that included thousands of pictures of the death and destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (it also contained many photos of the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe but that's a story for another day).  The images of cities utterly flattened by atomic bombs, and picture after picture with piles of bodies haunted me day and night.  

http://records.photodharma.net/notices/the-bombing-of-hiroshima

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/atomic-bombing-hiroshima-nagasaki-69-years-gallery-1.1892958?pmSlide=1.1892944

Along side my father I watched dozens of television documentaries on the use of atomic weapons in World War II, the current testing of atomic weapons, and the future possibilities of nuclear weapons. Supper conversation often involved discussions about the cold war and the likelihood of nuclear weapon use.  Sometimes family Sunday drives in the late 1950's and early 1960's included visits to local bomb shelter retailers.

Every week when my parents took me to the public library, in addition to the children's fiction I checked out each week, I would sneak copies of all the pamphlets on the librarians desk about how to recognize the signs of nuclear attack, what to do in case of attack, and how to fashion a bomb shelter in your garage. I read each of these pamphlets repeatedly and memorized every smidgen of information they contained.  (I am grateful that I did not know as a child how absurd and futile such advice was). 

Each night, I would lie in bed awake, wondering if each plane that flew over head was an enemy bomber carrying nuclear weapons. Since my house was positioned near the landing approach for San Francisco International Airport, there were dozens of planes passing overhead every night.  I would freeze motionless, listen to the sound of the engines, trying to guess which one might be delivering death from above.  Any flashes of light, or distant rumbles made me imagine that a bomb had been dropped nearby. 

As I lay awake I thought my way through constructing shelters from lumber and plywood (which we had) and sandbags (which we did not).  Sometimes I would hunch in bed under the covers in the "duck and cover" position that we were taught in school during earthquake/bomb drills.  

At some point, after the nuclear scare of October 1962, the intensity of my fears faded.  The sleepless nights and nightmares slipped away. But I never lost my anti-nuclear, anti-war convictions, which translated in adulthood into political action and advocacy. 

The questions of HONY

One of my daily addictions these days, along with millions of other people around the world is "Humans of New York" (fondly known among fans as HONY) the photography and interview project of Brandon Stanton. Brandon is a genius at capturing people both visually and through their words. You can view his work on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork or his blog at http://www.humansofnewyork.com/. Brandon also has a top selling book of his photographs interviews available everywhere. 

Brandon has developed a series of stock questions that he has found help unlock the interesting stories of people's lives. Among them are:

"What was the happiest moment of your life?"
"What was the saddest moment of your life?"
"What was the most frightened you've ever been?"
"What's your greatest struggle right now?"
and finally "If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people what would it be?"

Spending time reading the life stories that Brandon elicits, has gotten me to thinking about my own answers to those questions. I woke up this morning about 4:30 AM and spent the next ninety minutes thinking about those questions. Here's what I concluded:

"What was the happiest moment of your life?"

The summer of 2009 when I got to paint a mural for my college. Everything about my life was good, my parents were still alive, my husband and I were happy and healthy, and I got to spent an entire summer rediscovering the art that I loved so much (and getting paid!). It had been years since I'd done any painting, but it all came back to me, and I created something of beauty that will endure for years and be appreciated by many. 

"What was the saddest moment of your life?"

March 2012 when my mother and my dog Rosie died exactly one week apart. My mother was 89, had severe dementia and she frequently expressed the wish to die, so there was some sense of relief but still of course sadness, then when our beautiful, young dog suddenly became very ill two days later and died exactly a week after my mom the sadness simply overwhelmed me for weeks. 

"What was the most frightened you've ever been?" 

This is actually a toss up between two things. The first was in May 1982 on a Tuesday morning when I was told I had melanoma and that I had to report to the emergency room for surgery within two hours. The trauma of the diagnosis and immediate surgery was multiplied by the emergency room setting, where while I was being operated on with a local anesthesia an older woman in cardiac arrest was brought in to the cot next to mine, and I was totally aware of the doctors' unsuccessful efforts to revive her; she was declared dead and removed all while I was still being operated on. I was never more aware of my own mortality.

The second was probably a more sustained terror. In May 1980 in fear of my life, I had to move out of my apartment in the middle of the night (with the full cooperation of my landlords) to escape an alcoholic boyfriend who had suddenly turned violent. For several weeks I lived in fear that he would find my new apartment. He never did and life settled down.

"What's your greatest struggle right now?"

This is the easiest answer: making the changes in diet and activity to get a handle on my diabetes and improve my health so that I can look forward to enjoying the rest of my life and actually do all the things I've been planning for my retirement. 

and finally "If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people what would it be?"

It's the same advice I give myself every single day: Each day is a gift, even the most difficult days. Do not pray for the day to end, do not wish your life away. Pray instead for the strength, patience and wisdom to live fully in each moment." 

 So now, even though its unlikely I'll be going to New York City any time soon, or even less likely encountering Brandon Stanton, I have my answers ready!

finding a new path

Over the past two years my life has been rife with change, some good, some bad, some neutral, some unexpected, some much anticipated.

We've bought a new house and moved ourselves, our animals, and (most) of our belongings. It turns out that a move is a move with all the attendant disruption and financial pressures, even if the distance between the old house and new house is 25 feet.  A few months after the move, we took in a second stray dog - a 6 month old who still needed house training, and who chewed everything in sight (including some of the molding on the doors of the new house).

My mother descended rapidly into dementia and dealing with her bizarre delusions turned daily conversations into an emotional mine field. Ultimately six months ago, she had to be placed in 24 hour care.  At which point the pace of change ramped up.  The family house had to go on the market, decisions had to be made about belongings. Then suddenly mother had a heart attack and died. The family house got sold. Because of distance, lack of time, lack of resources, lack of energy, and lack of space here at home, the only realistic choice was let all those material things from my childhood go. Yes it would have been nice to have some of the beautiful pieces of furniture that my father had made in his workshop, or some of the delicate china and glass treasures that my mother had received from her parents. Now that choice is no longer available, all that represented my childhood has gone.

A week after my mother died, my older dog died.  For a long time, my day had been anchored in the evening by two things, walking my dog and calling my mother. Both anchors disappeared within a week of each other.

Six weeks after the dog died, I learned that my eating over which I'd lost control during this stressful period and the inevitable weight gain had thrown me over the threshold into full-blown diabetes. The fiction I carefully constructed for 50 years blew-up; that fiction was that being overweight didn't matter because I had good genes and the weight didn't affect my health . I'd always felt sorry for other people who had to watch what they ate. For 50 years, my cholesterol was normal, my blood pressure was not just normal but actually low, and my sugar metabolism was the envy of laboratory technicians in 5 states. Little did I realize the damage that I was doing, and that the bill would eventually have to be paid.

The next week while I was just beginning to figure out how to eat as a diabetic, my brothers came from California bearing not only mom's ashes, but also dad's (he died 2 and 1/2 years ago), to inter them in the cemetary in dad's home town in Virginia, which meant restaurants and family meals.

On the good change side, I received a modest inheritance, paid off all our consumer debts, paid down the new house, set aside some savings, and still had some left to indulge some long pent up demand - like replacing all the pillows and rugs that the young dog destroyed in her first year with us. But, being in debt had been part of my life for 40 years, since graduating from college, so this also is new, uncertain territory.

I was beginning to get a handle on how to eat, and how to exercise again (after hurting my back May 4 and breaking some ribs May 16), when the most recent blow fell this past Thursday from the cardiologist. The tiredness, exhaustion and shortness of breath - is probably some blockage in the cardiac arteries. How much blockage and where I go from here has to wait on more tests.

I have lots of friends who have been dealing with heart disease and with diabetes, several with both,  for many years.  I know that life can go on, and be a very rewarding life. I just don't quite know yet what that path looks like.

"I Remember Mama"

That was the title of one of my mother's favorite play/movie/TV shows - and the books on which those were based. I hadn't thought of these in years. There was actually two books in the fictionalized memoir by Kathryn Forbes about her Norwegian immigrant grandmother.

My mother is the one who taught me to love reading. She read to us almost every night. Unlike the photograph which my father staged, normally she would sit on a stool or in a chair in the hallway between my room and my brothers' room. We would lie in bed in the dark and she would read out-loud to us. She would read one or two chapters and leave us waiting for more the next night.

Among the books that I remember her reading to us are every single one of P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins books. The Mary Poppins of the books was nothing at all like Disney and Julie Andrews' Poppins. She was crotchety and plain and difficult, but also magical and wonderful as well. She also read us the 1950's classic Beverly Cleary series about Henry, Ramona and Beezus.

The book that my brothers and I loved the most, and the book that really transformed my life was Robert Heinlein's Red Planet. My brothers and I loved the alien "Willis" the Martian "bouncer." The book was so enchanting, that I started reading ahead of my mother during the day time (although I still enjoyed hearing her read it out-loud). That lead me to the "harder stuff" of science fiction, which I began to devour.

Before I was old enough to have an "adult" library card, I would go into the main part of the old San Mateo Library (one of those built by Carnegie of stone, marble and lots of steel), and pull down Galaxy Readers, and the Years Best Science Fiction, and read story after story in the reading room while my parents did their Saturday shopping in town.

With her nightly story time, my mother made reading a wonderful, delightful, guilty pleasure that I could not wait to embrace for myself. She initiated me into that magic world that so stimulated my intellect and imagination.

One of the saddest things about the dementia that took over my mother's life in the past three years is that it robbed her of the ability to read. She could not concentrate enough to follow the thread of even a short story. She could read the words - she'd read complicated documents out-loud to me on the phone having no trouble with any of the words, but she could not follow what she read.

father's day ruminations

For the first time in 49 years, I am not sending a father's day card, gift or making a father's day phone call, because my father died this past October. And my primary emotion is relief.

My feelings about my father have been very ambivalent for three decades, a complex push and pull of positive and negative emotions. Before that, from about age 8 to age 23 they weren't ambivalent at all: I hated my father, hated him with a passion that terrified me when I was a teenager, hated him with a passion that pushed me as far away from home for college (again for graduate school) as I could reasonably get. And before that, before the age of 8, I remember adoring my father.

What happened -- that is the huge mystery at the center of my life. How did I go from adoration to repulsion and hatred? I genuinely do not know. I have suspicions and circumstantial evidence, but no concrete memories that provide incontrovertible answers.

What I do know is that my father was a truly brilliant and talented man who suffered frustrations and obstacles in his education and work life, always having to work for other people who were less intelligent and knowledgeable, and as a consequence was bitter and extremely controlling in his family life.

farewell to James Tyler Cat

James Tyler Cat died early this morning, twenty-four days shy of his 13 birthday. He was born on my front porch on March 27, 1997, with two female siblings who preceded him in death. March 27 is my mother's birthday, so one of the female cats was named Josie T. after her, and James Tyler was named after her father, brother, cousin, and cousin's son -- four generations of James Tyler Crittendens.

James was a very large, pure white, long haired cat with a sweet and gentle disposition. He will be much missed.

at a loss

My father, Carroll Lee Greer, died yesterday morning. Peacefully, resting in his recliner at home in San Mateo, California. He was 97 years old.

He was born in December 1911 (same year as Ronald Reagan), in small logging town of Troutdale in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia (about three hours drive from where I live now).

My dad was like most dad's in the 1950's he earned the income while my mom took care of us kids. He worked as a machinist (and later a engineering technician) at United Air Line's main maintenance base at San Francisco International Airport. When he came home from work, we were suppose to be quiet, and listen respectfully, while he talked about his day during supper. Then every weekday night he watched the news (Walter Cronkite on CBS). Until I was 17 most nights after the news my dad either left home to go to classes at the community college (College of San Mateo) or he retreated to my parents bedroom to his desk to study for his classes.

My dad made sure, by both word and example, that we all understood the importance of getting a college education.He would talk about the things he was learning in his classes. I remember learning from him about the experiments on group conformity by Solomon Asch (some thing that I like to tell my students about today). When I was about eleven, a college algebra class he needed to take was made available on television at some really early hour of the morning, like 5:30 AM or 6:00 AM. I actually got up and watched much of it with him, fascinated, learning about things like square roots before I had completely mastered my multiplication tables (to this day I don't know what 8 x 7 is!).

He was very talented and creative. He won any number of awards and recognition for designing new tools and items for United's planes. He invented the special latches for holding the food trays in place in the galley during take off. He invented the "privacy curtain" on the circular stairwell of the new 747 jumbo jets so that passengers couldn't look up the skirts of stewardesses. At home he created beautiful yet practical handcrafted wood furniture for our home. Tables, chairs, a huge bunk-bed for my brothers, in later years he liked to create craft items, that were sold at the church bazaar.

Most of his creative expression was poured into photography. Everything we did was photographed! There are thousands and thousands of photos of me and my brothers and my mom -- and almost none of him. The few of him were staged with the use of a tripod. He also earned some extra money by doing wedding and event photography. I often got to go with him to weddings and act as his assistant when I was between the ages of 10 and 14.

My father bequeathed me many gifts -- artistic talent, a love of learning (especially mathematics and science), passion for photography. But most especially he bequeathed to me a set of values -- left, liberal, even radical values. He gave me The Communist Manifesto to read when I was about 12. He was a union man and walked the picket line for six weeks when I was 15. He believed in equality for all, and economic equity. His heroes were Muhammad Ali, who he admired for resisting the draft and for getting rid of his "slave name" (as well as for his amazing, beautiful ballet in the boxing ring), and Martin Luther King Jr. I would not be the person I am, the sociologist that I am were it not for the lessons my father taught me. He was a "working class hero."

Photographs are from top to bottom: My father on the front porch less than two months ago (2009) taken by my best friend (and my parents "other daughter") Betti DeMeules Christensen; My father with me and my brother Charlie at our back door in 1958 (photo set up by my dad using a tripod); My father with me, my brother Frank (baby), and my brother Charlie and the apple tree that now dominates the back yard in early 1957 (also a tripod photo he set up); my father writing in his journal in 1987, by me with the new Pentax camera he gave me.

booger's last day

Booger is not quite 15 years old. The friendliest of all my cats, the first to greet any stranger that enters the house, the most persistent lap cat I ever had, Booger unaccountably does not wish to be held at all in his final days.

In a perfect world I would have spared him the pain of the last two days, but my regular vet left town on vacation with no back up. I have located a vet, someone I knew years ago, a hour and a half away, who is willing to ease Booger on his way. Soon we will leave on Booger's final trip to a vet.

how should we live?

From geographic but not emotional distance, I follow through daily phone calls my parents lives. My father's life only comes to me from others. His profound deafness cut off his ability to communicate by phone some years ago. His detachment from the world put an end to even the occasional letter. But my mother still speaks for herself, every day. She doesn't always make sense but she shares her thoughts and feelings with me freely.

My parents example is a fearful one. At 97 (Dad) and 86 (Mom, in two weeks) their physical bodies are outlasting their minds and their abilities to care for themselves. Each of them is the second youngest child in their families, and their older siblings who died before them stayed mentally alert and in possession of their faculties until they died, even when they faced far worse physical ailments (cancer, heart disease).

My father has now lived four years longer than the longest lived of his siblings -- Aunt Mary died at 93, a sharp and irascible woman who made all her own decisions, including pre-arranging her funeral exactly as she wished it a few months before her death. The others died at even younger ages. Mother's oldest brother, James, was well into his 90's, and still went out to the fields every day.

I observe my parents and I am afraid. They have greater financial resources than my husband and I are likely to have in old age -- my father inherited substantial property from his deceased siblings, most of whom did not have children, and their California home is worth, even in this market, nearly a half-million dollars. And yet, given the costs of care, this may not be enough to provide for them.

My parents also have children, three of us, although only my brother Charles is both able (by retirement and proximity) and willing to shoulder the arduous responsibilities. My husband and I have no children.

I want to be healthier than I am at present. My current mantra is "I will not be a diabetic. I will not be a diabetic," as I struggle to lose weight to back away from the precipice ("pre-diabetic"). I want to enjoy walking, dancing, riding bikes, and things that have escaped me for some years as rheumatoid arthritis and other maladies have limited mobility (and helped to add the pounds).

Yet I wonder, is it possible to be too healthy. For the body to go on long after the mind and spirit have given up, or gone away? I think about the people I have known who have dropped dead suddenly from heart attack or stroke, or who have died fairly quickly after diagnosis of cancer. I fear pain far less than I fear helplessness, isolation and loss of control.

An academic and mystery fiction writer, Carolyn Heilbrun (better known to mystery fans as Amanda Cross), "often mused about killing herself at 70" (New York Times) rather than become old and dependent. Instead she waited until she was 77. She was a reasonable, rational, pragmatic and principled person, who made a deliberate choice to end her life while it was still enjoyable. I do not think that I ever could or would make such a choice, but I find myself admiring her for her choice.

One Single Impression -- Welcoming

My first thought at this week's prompt is a book by Kate Wilhelm Welcome, Chaos which I highly recommend. Sometimes we need, desire, welcome, "bad" things, because they are a gateway to something better.

welcoming

she will not speak its name,
cannot ask directly, or say aloud
her fearful hope,
but she murmurs occasionally
of ‘a way,’ ‘a means,’
to choose the end,
control that final moment,
say 'when' and ‘welcome.’

sgreerpitt
November 29, 2008

Today's photo "Last Light in Autumn" was taken by me, early November 2008.

For more excellent poems on the theme of "welcoming" see One Single Impression Sunday November 30, 2008.

things over which we have no control

I took a break from grading essays today to take Miss Minnie kitty to the vet. She has twice previously had cancerous lumps removed from her breasts, and now has two more. After a thorough exam, the vet thinks that the cancer has moved beyond the breasts into the lymph nodes, which are now swollen and hard. After much discussion, we have decided that further surgery will not change the course of the disease now, and will only weaken her. She is not a young cat -- at least 13 years old -- and frail in many ways. So our plan is to make her comfortable for as long as she continues to show an interest in food and life, and then ease her way out when life gets to hard for her.

Miss Minnie entered our lives in January 1996. We saw this little rag of a black cat running with an obvious broken back leg through the snow. She was holed up under an old, unused bridge over the creek near our condo. It took more than a week of putting out food before we could capture her, and get her to the vet. The vet was astounded that she'd been mobile at all given that her back leg was broken clean through just below the hip. It required multiple surgeries and metal pins to put Miss Minnie to rights. After all the x-rays and surgeries were completed, but while her leg still had its pin, we discovered she was pregnant. The only reasonable thing to do given her poor health was to do spay/abortion. Most of the fetuses were deformed due to the x-rays.

It was late enough in Miss Minnie's pregnancy that her hormone levels signalled to her that she had given birth. She looked around for kittens to protect, and found John and I. She treated us like her kittens. She would groom us, sit on our laps and defend us against the approaches of our other 9 cats, and attempt to herd us away from danger (like the top of the stairs). She was a fierce and protective mother to us. Ultimately the hormones faded and after several months, Miss Minnie settled in as a regular member of our human/cat family.

stacking stones

Sometime after February 22 (the day of the memorial for Ken), I noticed a small cairn or stack of stones balanced on the retaining wall along the driveway into the college's parking garage. The cairn has perhaps six or seven stones ranging from perhaps 10" to about 3" perfectly balanced. It has remained there, undisturbed for weeks.

I was reminded immediately of the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of "Stones for Ibarra" (Glenn Close and Keith Carradine), set in a tiny Mexican village, where the villagers stacked stones for commemoration.

The idea of stacking stones for memory/remembrance appears to be common to a variety of cultures. At the end of the film "Schindler's List" the survivors and their families, file past Schindler's grave in Israel and deposit stones.

I do not know why the small cairn was created on the retaining wall or who created it. Perhaps some one was just looking for a convenient place to put stones that had fallen in the drive way. Perhaps, a student, bored between classes used it as a way to pass some idle time. But I like to imagine that some one put it there on purpose. Because it appeared shortly after Ken's death, I imagine it as a tiny memorial to him.

time run like a freight train

At the end of last week, another professor at my small college campus died as the result of injuries sustained in a crash. It was a single vehicle accident (witnessed by one of his students), possibly the result of a seizure that caused him to loose control of the vehicle, run off the road into a river. There was a family funeral earlier this week in the next county. Friday we had a small, simple memorial service for faculty, staff and students.

I didn't know Ken very well. Very few of us did. He was very quiet, and kept to himself. At the memorial service it was reassuring to learn that he did have a few very good friends among at the college, people with whom he was open and sharing.

I regret that I didn't make more of an effort to know him, because I really liked what I did know. Some years ago, I drew Ken's name in our annual Christmas gift exchange. I had to do quite a bit of digging to get ideas. The woman who shared an office with him was able to tell me that Ken did stain glass work, and was quite good at it. I got him some patterns and some specialty glass. Now, I wish I'd followed up and found out what he'd done with my gift. One of the people who did know him well had seen his work, and said that it was beautiful.

Ken came to several professional development workshops I gave. He always asked good questions, had a subtle sense of humor, and made comments worth remembering. He was a large bear of a man, who always wore the same type of woven, white shirt, with no tie, no jacket winter and summer. He always seemed to be smiling.

I think many of us came away from the memorial service thinking the same thing -- that we have to make time to know people, to share with them, to be with them. College's are greedy institutions, they suck up faculty's time, the more you give, the more college's will take. Sometimes you just have to say "no" to work, and reach out to others.

After the memorial, another faculty member and I sat down and visited for nearly and hour. Mostly we talked about how stressed we were by work, but for once, instead of allowing that stress to cause us to part after a few hasty words, we relaxed for a while and caught up on each others' lives.