June 21, 2020

The Spirit of Reorganization fell upon me yesterday, and I cleaned out and reorganized until two boxes of stuff went to Goodwill and several cupboards and shelves opened up. I  arranged things rather inefficiently when I moved in, and acquired oddly– eleven thermoses, for example. The energy continued today, when I went to school (empty, empty) and took a few more boxes of my stuff out of my office. Forgot I had several books, such as the Complete Poems of Archibald MacLeish, whose spines had faded in the light and could no longer be read from my chair. My mind continues its retrospective critique of my experience at UNCA. All the pedagogy was good and all, or most, of the administration was bad, at least after a certain point. I remember Jane walking in to the summer faculty meeting–her first appearance–and saying ‘We are moving from a teaching paradigm to a learning paradigm.” We should have fired her then and saved ourselves the long decline. The faculty and a well landscaped campus was all UNCA had, and though the landscaping is still pretty, administration did everything it could to destroy the faculty. I think it succeeded. But, time is long. Wait and see.