March 4, 2014

Return to school. Good Tolkien class. Humanities meeting in which the concerns I brought up before surfaced again, with a different level of support, and seem to have carried the day, or at least demanded a place in the day. The degree to which an experiment got out of the hands of the experimenters and our untenured colleagues felt threatened and compelled by the asst. provost became clearer. He thinks that bullying and talking loudly through meetings proves his point, and it does to those who have reason to be cowed. He assumes that the costly purging of his last academic bad idea is far enough in the past that he can start again. I never understood the timidity of the untenured. I don’t believe I was timid, but I also had Jeff Rackham looking out for me.

First rehearsal I was able to make of Man and Superman. The rest of the cast is quite good, and it will be a challenge. My memories stretch to the old days when a good cast was something one never could assume from Montford. Those days are gone. Great Jehovah, the lines! I feared my orgy of memorization, but my route is easy. Is Shaw considered a great playwright because he can put together excellent sentences? I don’t see how his plays, taken as a whole, radiate greatness. But there I am. The director wants me to be less sincere, more patronizing, and he is right.