August 15, 2018

The days have had the wondrous golden smoothness of summer. The Atlantic seaboard drowns and California burns, but we are in paradise.

Monday I gave to school business from 6 AM on. Got George his independent study. Hammered a likely schedule together for the coming months. Left just as the departmental retreat–which I had forgotten– began, so I had to turn around and go back.  It is remarkable that in my 35 years of teaching, almost no department meeting has been given over to the discussion of material, or how best to deliver that material to students. It has, instead, all been of ways to accommodate the superfluous and often onerous requirements of the administration, of ways to do the right thing while still pretending to be obedient to their directives. To have education you need a teacher and a student. Everything else is an add–on, in the fullest sense unnecessary. I believe administration’s perception of its superfluity drives it more than anything else. So long as we jump thought its hoops, fill out its forms, it believes it has a place. I have accommodated myself to this largely by ignoring the whole thing and, whenever possible, doing as I believed was right, below or despite the radar. This was wrong. I should have fought– though, now that I think of it, fighting caused the Humanities debacle. Fought, perhaps, with more subtlety. A true academic politician never believes, as I believe, that the right side must win. That would have been knocked out of me had I engaged early on.

I’ve aged out of the community in my department. They are all younger than me now– by decades-- and pretty much ignore me, though saying that makes it sound deliberate, and it isn’t. They are all young and ambitious and untenured and raising families, and what would we have to talk about? They don’t reject me; they don’t actually see me. I understand. Still, I feel lonely.

Cheryl came to my studio to buy a bird painting. Being there to greet her caused me to paint much and well. We talked of Akron. We never talked at school, but that seems not to matter now.  We manage to have the same memories.

Rose today determined to take another stab at the garden, and did so. Planted Echinacea and butterfly weed and black-eyed Susan. Weeded and mulched a tiny portion of the fence garden. Strove mightily against the rogue half-acre of mint, and got, miraculously, all of it pulled, though the next step must be to dig out the roots. It is amazing the volume of plant material left over after such a project. I rejoice every time I am able to exert over a period of time without exhaustion. I don’t think I worked very much harder than I did today even in the days of my might.