"Dr. Marsden, so good of you to join us."
This is only part of why I disliked attending these meetings. Chance Regnerus was a township trustee, a noted wit as he would be happy to tell you, and an heir of a fortune with a truly obscure origin and disreputable antecedents. He covered such discreditable history by always being on the offensive with jibes and digs and cheery unpleasantries, considered by many to be an amusing man but, to me, always an offensive one.
If I was even a minute late, it would be an overstatement. At any rate.
Sitting down, I looked around at my compatriots on the Memorials Committee. A farmer, a widow, an accountant, a retiree from some form of public service (the postal service, I believe), and Chance himself, in half glasses that I suspect are an affectation, a knit pullover even on this warm day, and some sort of mountaineering pants with zippers around the knees. He was a man of action, or so he presented himself, although I suspect his action was entirely in the care of skilled guides and paid porters.
"We have received a call that will be of interest to you, I believe," Chance declared as I took my seat.
"Let us hope so," I responded mildly.
The widow spoke up as she often did at the beginning of these meetings, and I truly regret that I can never quite remember her name. "Shall we open in prayer?"
Chance nodded gravely. "Yes, of course. Would you do us the honor?" To which the lady did a nice job of invoking the Deity and calling us to accountability, and then we were ready to get on with our work.
"Having no other business before us," Chance said, "let me move directly to the very interesting call I received last week."
"You all know Mr. Schlieven," to which we all nodded. A noted philanthropist and do-gooder of the area. "He has a simple offer to make, based on but a single request."
The unnecessary silence that followed was clearly a stagey opportunity for Chance to draw even more attention to himself. With a smile that made this presumption even more obvious, he finally continued: "If the village and the college will go smoke-free outside entirely, he will make a gift of some six to seven figures to our mutual coffers."
The silence that followed was a bit more sincere. The offer was undoubtedly serious, but the implementation had the potential to become tragi-comic. Mr. Schlieven's interest in ending outdoor smoking was based in a number of deaths in his own family, and a very real distaste for the practice of smoking, a habit I am indeed thankful to never have taken up, but to get the students and local citizens to give up casual outdoor smoking . . . that was quite another challenge. Not to mention that smoking was the students' preferred way to ingest their favorite intoxicant, grown in many cases right here in the vicinity. Yes, in our greenhouses. I'm not happy about it, but I am when all is said and done a realist.
"How does this effect the church?" asked the farmer, whose name I do not feel bad about forgetting, given how forgettable most of his questions and comments were.
"We have been asked to be . . . stewards of this request, if you will. Mr. Schlieven would like us to lead this effort to clear the air around Upper Sharon, in return for which he will present a love offering to our endowment."
"Clear the air . . ." I could not resist.
"Yes," Chance answered. "He would like us to press the village council and the trustees of the college to declare the locality 'smoke free' and secure such legal guarantees as are feasible under state law."
"How," I asked with, I must confess, a certain level of false deference, "does he think we should enforce this proposed ban? Because I must confess that we've found it difficult to keep students and even some staff from smoking even nearby to our firetrap wooden buildings. We threaten fines and sanctions and expulsion and termination, and still they burn for their inhalants."
"Perhaps the answer is to no longer threaten," Chance smiled, as if he had expected exactly this objection. "If there is the security of financial as well as moral support behind the enforcement, might the college, let alone the village, be more willing to impose what to date they have only implied?"
We were silent together again. I reflected on what it would mean on our campus to more vigorously impose penalties on students caught smoking, and thought about an even smaller student body than we had now, which is a very small number indeed. And I thought about Mr. Schlieven's money, which was a number far from small.
The others thought whatever it was that they thought, if indeed they were thinking at all. Chance simply smiled, I am quite certain without any thoughts whatsoever.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Chapter Three
Where was I, then? Oh yes. Smoking and tattooed youth. And my church.
Within the village of Upper Sharon, where I do as little business as possible, I was across the creek to attend a meeting at the Community Church. We occupy one of an assortment of architectural gems built there in the burst of philanthropic exuberance brought to us by Miss Woodhull on her mother's behalf in the 1920s.
In the village, she erected a number of public structures in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but I must confess I have acquired it, and even find the somewhat dated peculiarities of the architecture comforting. It means home to me now.
Local legend has it that she went to her mother's birthplace, and offered to build them a library, and they turned her down flat. Indignant, she drove off and the next village she encountered she got out and asked "would you like a library here?" When the citizens of Upper Sharon said "why, yes," it was the beginning of a complicated but very fruitful relationship.
The library was built, then the Community Church to which I alluded earlier, and then a Memorial Hall for public meetings which went up right next to Carpenter's Hall, the Greek Revival era public building where the Masons and the Odd Fellows and all sorts of other groups had their meetings before the arrival of Woodhull money to the town.
Then came the brainstorm of St. Fiacre's Residential Library on the bluff opposite the village across Auter Creek, a vast pile of pseudo-Gothic echoing its Welsh inspiration at Hawarden, Gladstone's Library, and finally the purchase and elaboration of the then-near-ruinous Halcyon Academy building in between St. Fiacre's and the village. The Old Main of which in my opinion is still a ruin, who knows how many myriad dollars later spent to keep it erect.
And as we all must, Mrs. Woodhull Martin died, Miss Woodhull kept to her side of the Atlantic to wind down her mother's affairs, and we were left with memories and buildings and an endowment. Rather, the libraries, residential and community, were left with endowments. Cyrus College was left with buildings, old and new, and no endowment. Perhaps she meant to "get around to it," as they say. But she did not.
Upper Sharon Community Church did not have an endowment either, but we were blessed with an active membership and sufficient support through the years that we had no more and no less to worry about than any congregation with a large, old building and a dwindling, aging body of parishoners. To be fair, we had done better than most, but in this small town we were never going to be a large church, and God himself forbid we might ever insert screens and shows and drums and din into the worship space. We did have a discreetly placed speaker system, but that necessity comes from both the age of the ears in the pews and perhaps the fact that seminaries do not seem to teach their students anything about public speaking, let alone projection, before sending them off to be ordained.
The church building faced south, with the sanctuary inside facing just a little north of east, a Tiffany window catching the sunrise particularly well in the weeks around Easter. This meant the broad steps and porch took you into a vestibule which then had steps inside to either side, up to the sanctuary level (and an elevator installed thirty years ago to the west, a bleak protrusion off of the otherwise genteelly ornamented building).
It also meant that the wide staircase was a sunny and warm spot for people to sit and gather, which would seem charming were it not for . . . yes, you've anticipated me. Smoking tattooed youth. And skateboards.
We had put up signs and even called the local constabulary on more than one occasion, to the point where the "boarders" knew they could not ply their art on our steps, marking and marring the stone with their skids and hacks and chops or whatever they call their "moves." Still they would sit there, skateboards held across their laps, eyeing cooly anyone passing by not of their clan.
"Good afternoon," I said briskly passing through them on my way up the steps.
"Good afternoon, Chancellor" said one of them, looking vaguely familiar. Of course, most of them were our students. I should have been gratified that one of them recognized me at all. With a curt nod of my head in her direction, I went on in to my meeting.
Within the village of Upper Sharon, where I do as little business as possible, I was across the creek to attend a meeting at the Community Church. We occupy one of an assortment of architectural gems built there in the burst of philanthropic exuberance brought to us by Miss Woodhull on her mother's behalf in the 1920s.
In the village, she erected a number of public structures in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but I must confess I have acquired it, and even find the somewhat dated peculiarities of the architecture comforting. It means home to me now.
Local legend has it that she went to her mother's birthplace, and offered to build them a library, and they turned her down flat. Indignant, she drove off and the next village she encountered she got out and asked "would you like a library here?" When the citizens of Upper Sharon said "why, yes," it was the beginning of a complicated but very fruitful relationship.
The library was built, then the Community Church to which I alluded earlier, and then a Memorial Hall for public meetings which went up right next to Carpenter's Hall, the Greek Revival era public building where the Masons and the Odd Fellows and all sorts of other groups had their meetings before the arrival of Woodhull money to the town.
Then came the brainstorm of St. Fiacre's Residential Library on the bluff opposite the village across Auter Creek, a vast pile of pseudo-Gothic echoing its Welsh inspiration at Hawarden, Gladstone's Library, and finally the purchase and elaboration of the then-near-ruinous Halcyon Academy building in between St. Fiacre's and the village. The Old Main of which in my opinion is still a ruin, who knows how many myriad dollars later spent to keep it erect.
And as we all must, Mrs. Woodhull Martin died, Miss Woodhull kept to her side of the Atlantic to wind down her mother's affairs, and we were left with memories and buildings and an endowment. Rather, the libraries, residential and community, were left with endowments. Cyrus College was left with buildings, old and new, and no endowment. Perhaps she meant to "get around to it," as they say. But she did not.
Upper Sharon Community Church did not have an endowment either, but we were blessed with an active membership and sufficient support through the years that we had no more and no less to worry about than any congregation with a large, old building and a dwindling, aging body of parishoners. To be fair, we had done better than most, but in this small town we were never going to be a large church, and God himself forbid we might ever insert screens and shows and drums and din into the worship space. We did have a discreetly placed speaker system, but that necessity comes from both the age of the ears in the pews and perhaps the fact that seminaries do not seem to teach their students anything about public speaking, let alone projection, before sending them off to be ordained.
The church building faced south, with the sanctuary inside facing just a little north of east, a Tiffany window catching the sunrise particularly well in the weeks around Easter. This meant the broad steps and porch took you into a vestibule which then had steps inside to either side, up to the sanctuary level (and an elevator installed thirty years ago to the west, a bleak protrusion off of the otherwise genteelly ornamented building).
It also meant that the wide staircase was a sunny and warm spot for people to sit and gather, which would seem charming were it not for . . . yes, you've anticipated me. Smoking tattooed youth. And skateboards.
We had put up signs and even called the local constabulary on more than one occasion, to the point where the "boarders" knew they could not ply their art on our steps, marking and marring the stone with their skids and hacks and chops or whatever they call their "moves." Still they would sit there, skateboards held across their laps, eyeing cooly anyone passing by not of their clan.
"Good afternoon," I said briskly passing through them on my way up the steps.
"Good afternoon, Chancellor" said one of them, looking vaguely familiar. Of course, most of them were our students. I should have been gratified that one of them recognized me at all. With a curt nod of my head in her direction, I went on in to my meeting.
Chapter Two
As chancellor, my duties do not extend to student discipline. This is a subject I neither understand nor enjoy -- to me, rules are either followed, or broken, and broken rules receive warnings first, discipline second, and dismissal third. It seems simple, although my colleagues are ceaselessly telling me it is not.
Given the fact that we have a simply ridiculous number of buildings on our campus with a tragically small student body, the reality is that we have far too much room for mischief to occur.
Add in buildings that are not ours to control (not that we even control our own campus in toto,) like the quaint but tumbledown Indian Mill across the creek, and the adjoining grounds and outbuildings of St. Fiacre's Library on the bluff overhead, and you can complain about many things as a student here at Cyrus College, but lack of places to go off by yourself would not be one of them.
Since our campus population is entirely above the age of eighteen, they are, at least as the law sees them, adults, and we are expected by parents and the federal government and by law and precedent to treat them as such, no matter how vividly their behavior shows this is not the case.
The shall we say liberal, progressive ethos of the campus means that fights, as generally understood, are rare. Fisticuffs are simply not the thing here. And sexual assault, while sadly not unknown here, is less frequent than some commentators might lead you think is common on college campuses. Respect for each other, and for the educational process, is paramount. Yes, even among our young adults.
But they do not respect themselves.
This is the great tragedy of youth today. Their entire perspective on life, their own lives, and the possible import of that life when it reaches maturity: well, I think first and foremost of the appalling new practice, one could almost say a habit, of getting one's skin tattooed. And while I do my best not to peer in an inappropriate fashion at the bodily forms of our young charges here, I am forced to see enough of their so-called body art to say that, if one were to get a tattoo, why would you choose the endless array of skulls, flames, and Gothic lettering that seems all the rage? And as for barbed wire . . .
At any rate, tattooing is not against our campus rules, while it might well be in a state governed by philosopher-kings. What is forbidden is smoking indoors, and that is not only for the health of one's lungs and those of others, but for the health of our admittedly decrepit and largely wooden buildings. They have a certain rustic charm going back to their origins in the 1920s, and they would no doubt look quite compellingly attractive in flames, an image I might easily indulge in if I were given to such fantasies. And if you had any responsibility for their upkeep you might just do so.
Our dean of student life, Tamara Rezik, is incessantly coming to President Doone asking for exemptions from this rule or a variation in the usual enforcement for that. Students who are caught in all manner of infractions, or are found making off with campus property, or whose academic records make it clear they have no business either here or in any other post-secondary institution, all find a willing ear and a bleeding heart in Dean Rezik's office. And to date, I have not chosen to exert my influence to sway our president's final decisions in a more decisive, emphatic direction.
The Dean has been here, truth be told, almost as long as I have. And while she has the well-deserved respect of her colleagues -- most of us recall her handling of the Wilkinson situation ten years ago with a mixture of awe and appreciation, a child of a board member who . . . well, we all signed the agreement. Nevermind. What I meant to say was that I think, in our little hermetically sealed environment, we all know each other all too well. And I am certain that my fellow faculty members would not mind seeing a few presidential decrees that turn the direction of the school back towards discipline and decorum.
Given the fact that we have a simply ridiculous number of buildings on our campus with a tragically small student body, the reality is that we have far too much room for mischief to occur.
Add in buildings that are not ours to control (not that we even control our own campus in toto,) like the quaint but tumbledown Indian Mill across the creek, and the adjoining grounds and outbuildings of St. Fiacre's Library on the bluff overhead, and you can complain about many things as a student here at Cyrus College, but lack of places to go off by yourself would not be one of them.
Since our campus population is entirely above the age of eighteen, they are, at least as the law sees them, adults, and we are expected by parents and the federal government and by law and precedent to treat them as such, no matter how vividly their behavior shows this is not the case.
The shall we say liberal, progressive ethos of the campus means that fights, as generally understood, are rare. Fisticuffs are simply not the thing here. And sexual assault, while sadly not unknown here, is less frequent than some commentators might lead you think is common on college campuses. Respect for each other, and for the educational process, is paramount. Yes, even among our young adults.
But they do not respect themselves.
This is the great tragedy of youth today. Their entire perspective on life, their own lives, and the possible import of that life when it reaches maturity: well, I think first and foremost of the appalling new practice, one could almost say a habit, of getting one's skin tattooed. And while I do my best not to peer in an inappropriate fashion at the bodily forms of our young charges here, I am forced to see enough of their so-called body art to say that, if one were to get a tattoo, why would you choose the endless array of skulls, flames, and Gothic lettering that seems all the rage? And as for barbed wire . . .
At any rate, tattooing is not against our campus rules, while it might well be in a state governed by philosopher-kings. What is forbidden is smoking indoors, and that is not only for the health of one's lungs and those of others, but for the health of our admittedly decrepit and largely wooden buildings. They have a certain rustic charm going back to their origins in the 1920s, and they would no doubt look quite compellingly attractive in flames, an image I might easily indulge in if I were given to such fantasies. And if you had any responsibility for their upkeep you might just do so.
Our dean of student life, Tamara Rezik, is incessantly coming to President Doone asking for exemptions from this rule or a variation in the usual enforcement for that. Students who are caught in all manner of infractions, or are found making off with campus property, or whose academic records make it clear they have no business either here or in any other post-secondary institution, all find a willing ear and a bleeding heart in Dean Rezik's office. And to date, I have not chosen to exert my influence to sway our president's final decisions in a more decisive, emphatic direction.
The Dean has been here, truth be told, almost as long as I have. And while she has the well-deserved respect of her colleagues -- most of us recall her handling of the Wilkinson situation ten years ago with a mixture of awe and appreciation, a child of a board member who . . . well, we all signed the agreement. Nevermind. What I meant to say was that I think, in our little hermetically sealed environment, we all know each other all too well. And I am certain that my fellow faculty members would not mind seeing a few presidential decrees that turn the direction of the school back towards discipline and decorum.
Part Three - Chapter One
My name is Dr. Brett Marsden, and I'm not complaining, but I do want my side recorded, which is why I'm putting my version of events down on paper.
When Hazel left on her wild goose chase to England, I was left behind in Upper Sharon to somehow keep the home fires burning at Cyrus College. Bills were going unpaid, student information requests unanswered, disturbances taking place on campus, but she left to spend what was supposed to be a week chatting with a friend. Whatever.
As Chancellor of Cyrus College, my responsibilities are something of a combination of provost, comptroller, and all around dog's-body to the staff and faculty. They all can leave at the end of their day, but Cyrus College is my life, and my home along The Range next to Old Main is a humble retreat where any and all might come and ask for my guidance and assistance, and many do.
To be fair, the small faculty (technically, only fourteen professors and a woodpile's worth of instructors) keeps the usual rigors of a provost's life to a minimum, and our student body is well tended to by the dean of student life. President Doone and I met biweekly (I wish it were more often), and while she can have an abrupt way about her, the truth is that we often did not have enough academic business to maintain a full hour's worth of meeting.
Except for the subject we should have been discussing, which was the fate of the college itself. The dwindling student body, the small matter of accreditation, and the future of our sort of horticultural and landscape design based education . . . all these things are what we should have been discussing, and at length.
President Doone doubtless had such conversations with the board, but she did not need to ask for my sympathy for me to know that their vision of the future was as myopic as any of their attempts at decision making. Short-sighted, short-term, stultified thinking if indeed you could call it thinking . . . but I digress.
Money, I suppose, has an intelligence all its own, but it is like the sort of cognition we're told to expect from alien beings from distant stars. We may be working on different sets of criteria altogether, and not recognize the sense being made by the other. Most of our wealthy trustees have to be respected if only for the fact that they are, and have generally made themselves, a goodly fortune; when you sit and converse with most of them, you walk away wondering how on earth they did so.
At any rate, the president can count on my complete and utter support in whatever she can achieve in gaining the attention and directing the actions of those peculiar creatures. They persist, however, in having their own ideas, each of which has to be dealt with in the form of studies and dialogues and responses that each takes an eon of their own, all of which takes time that, frankly, Cyrus College does not have.
As Chancellor of our august institution, however oddly chartered, my concern is to maintain high academic standards on the part of both students and faculty, while ensuring the long-term viability of the college. Ms. Woodhull and her mother wanted to establish a women's college of horticultural studies, thinking that they could continue to thread their own particular needle of women's liberation even while affirming a very traditional view of women's roles. To do this, they thought that empowering young women to work the land, open up and manage small businesses of an agricultural sort, and continue in their married and maternal lives with the vigorous hobbies of landscape gardening and greenhouse agriculture, all would be in keeping with their . . . philosophies.
Whether the specific nature of the college was ever truly discussed between those two fine, unusual and unusually gifted women, is a matter open for debate. But in their shared passion for spiritualism, women's suffrage, and a love of the land and all that is rustic, they created this college, named for Zula Maud's spirit guide, and devoted to a program that fits only awkwardly into the world as we have it today.
When Hazel left on her wild goose chase to England, I was left behind in Upper Sharon to somehow keep the home fires burning at Cyrus College. Bills were going unpaid, student information requests unanswered, disturbances taking place on campus, but she left to spend what was supposed to be a week chatting with a friend. Whatever.
As Chancellor of Cyrus College, my responsibilities are something of a combination of provost, comptroller, and all around dog's-body to the staff and faculty. They all can leave at the end of their day, but Cyrus College is my life, and my home along The Range next to Old Main is a humble retreat where any and all might come and ask for my guidance and assistance, and many do.
To be fair, the small faculty (technically, only fourteen professors and a woodpile's worth of instructors) keeps the usual rigors of a provost's life to a minimum, and our student body is well tended to by the dean of student life. President Doone and I met biweekly (I wish it were more often), and while she can have an abrupt way about her, the truth is that we often did not have enough academic business to maintain a full hour's worth of meeting.
Except for the subject we should have been discussing, which was the fate of the college itself. The dwindling student body, the small matter of accreditation, and the future of our sort of horticultural and landscape design based education . . . all these things are what we should have been discussing, and at length.
President Doone doubtless had such conversations with the board, but she did not need to ask for my sympathy for me to know that their vision of the future was as myopic as any of their attempts at decision making. Short-sighted, short-term, stultified thinking if indeed you could call it thinking . . . but I digress.
Money, I suppose, has an intelligence all its own, but it is like the sort of cognition we're told to expect from alien beings from distant stars. We may be working on different sets of criteria altogether, and not recognize the sense being made by the other. Most of our wealthy trustees have to be respected if only for the fact that they are, and have generally made themselves, a goodly fortune; when you sit and converse with most of them, you walk away wondering how on earth they did so.
At any rate, the president can count on my complete and utter support in whatever she can achieve in gaining the attention and directing the actions of those peculiar creatures. They persist, however, in having their own ideas, each of which has to be dealt with in the form of studies and dialogues and responses that each takes an eon of their own, all of which takes time that, frankly, Cyrus College does not have.
As Chancellor of our august institution, however oddly chartered, my concern is to maintain high academic standards on the part of both students and faculty, while ensuring the long-term viability of the college. Ms. Woodhull and her mother wanted to establish a women's college of horticultural studies, thinking that they could continue to thread their own particular needle of women's liberation even while affirming a very traditional view of women's roles. To do this, they thought that empowering young women to work the land, open up and manage small businesses of an agricultural sort, and continue in their married and maternal lives with the vigorous hobbies of landscape gardening and greenhouse agriculture, all would be in keeping with their . . . philosophies.
Whether the specific nature of the college was ever truly discussed between those two fine, unusual and unusually gifted women, is a matter open for debate. But in their shared passion for spiritualism, women's suffrage, and a love of the land and all that is rustic, they created this college, named for Zula Maud's spirit guide, and devoted to a program that fits only awkwardly into the world as we have it today.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Chapter Eighteen
Her hotel was near the John Hancock Center, with windows that looked out onto the lower levels of the angular bulk of that dark, x-ed tower anchoring the northern end of the Chicago archipelago of skyscrapers. A few more tall buildings stepped their way down from the hundred-some floors of the Hancock, but the bend of the beach, the curve of Lake Shore Drive, and the extent of the Magnificent Mile ran out about there.
The Newberry was a not-unpleasant good walk to the west and north, and this particular hotel was well recommended and familiar by now to her. The view she had this visit was of a mysterious low black building between her window and the Hancock itself, on land that had to be insanely valuable, with darkened windows and few of those, just a story and a half in height.
The front desk staff smiled a "we get asked that" smile, and explained it was a very private and extremely expensive card club, which had over a hundred years of history. "The John Hancock folks wanted it back in the 70s when they were building, and they couldn't find a way to buy it."
From above, as in a plane, you noticed things about a building that just walking by six or seven times (as she must have done on visits before) did not reveal. The relative humility of the quarter-block brick structure, all the more striking among the opulent neighbors, a description that fit her hotel as well.
So many mysteries, all around us, often right in front of us, and we don't see them, and don't even know we don't see them. Houses, card clubs, people. Desk staff and wealthy bridge players. Daughters and students and even the receptionist in the administration building. What was it about her father someone had told her last week, that he had cancer or some lung disorder, was ill, was on hospice? Was that at home, or in a hospital? She hadn't really asked, and now didn't even remember whom she could ask now.
Clair, a friend who was not a friend, but the source of more friendly conversation than most people she talked to in a week or a month. The Newberry, which was a home and not a home. A connection where she didn't quite fit in, but where she knew her place and enjoyed fitting into it. If she truly belonged, if she worked there, would the distancing begin whether she intended it or not?
And this hotel. By definition, a place where one did not belong, and yet you had a room. Until 11 am tomorrow, it was hers, and after that, it was someone else's. She had an absolute right to be here right now, but in another week - no right, or she could have the right for as long as you wish, if she wanted to pay the freight.
If she went to London, even more so there, in whatever hotel would become the place she would try to fit into, and where she would feel her strangeness all the more. "Two countries separated by a common language" -- Mencken? Twain? But British English had a deceptive familiarity all its own, and strangenesses that could snag you by your sleeves like multifloral rose on an Ohio hike.
Even her rooms at St. Fiacre's: they were absolutely hers, and the moment she quit or retired or was fired (or died, she reminded herself), they would be assigned to another. Her place in the world, in this world, or her world as Chief Librarian: she would be replaced quickly. Which is not to say unmourned, but certainly without a pause in the slow but steady stream of guests and visitors. She would be missed, but not for very long.
The Newberry was a not-unpleasant good walk to the west and north, and this particular hotel was well recommended and familiar by now to her. The view she had this visit was of a mysterious low black building between her window and the Hancock itself, on land that had to be insanely valuable, with darkened windows and few of those, just a story and a half in height.
The front desk staff smiled a "we get asked that" smile, and explained it was a very private and extremely expensive card club, which had over a hundred years of history. "The John Hancock folks wanted it back in the 70s when they were building, and they couldn't find a way to buy it."
From above, as in a plane, you noticed things about a building that just walking by six or seven times (as she must have done on visits before) did not reveal. The relative humility of the quarter-block brick structure, all the more striking among the opulent neighbors, a description that fit her hotel as well.
So many mysteries, all around us, often right in front of us, and we don't see them, and don't even know we don't see them. Houses, card clubs, people. Desk staff and wealthy bridge players. Daughters and students and even the receptionist in the administration building. What was it about her father someone had told her last week, that he had cancer or some lung disorder, was ill, was on hospice? Was that at home, or in a hospital? She hadn't really asked, and now didn't even remember whom she could ask now.
Clair, a friend who was not a friend, but the source of more friendly conversation than most people she talked to in a week or a month. The Newberry, which was a home and not a home. A connection where she didn't quite fit in, but where she knew her place and enjoyed fitting into it. If she truly belonged, if she worked there, would the distancing begin whether she intended it or not?
And this hotel. By definition, a place where one did not belong, and yet you had a room. Until 11 am tomorrow, it was hers, and after that, it was someone else's. She had an absolute right to be here right now, but in another week - no right, or she could have the right for as long as you wish, if she wanted to pay the freight.
If she went to London, even more so there, in whatever hotel would become the place she would try to fit into, and where she would feel her strangeness all the more. "Two countries separated by a common language" -- Mencken? Twain? But British English had a deceptive familiarity all its own, and strangenesses that could snag you by your sleeves like multifloral rose on an Ohio hike.
Even her rooms at St. Fiacre's: they were absolutely hers, and the moment she quit or retired or was fired (or died, she reminded herself), they would be assigned to another. Her place in the world, in this world, or her world as Chief Librarian: she would be replaced quickly. Which is not to say unmourned, but certainly without a pause in the slow but steady stream of guests and visitors. She would be missed, but not for very long.
Chapter Seventeen
Clair Baring-Schultze didn't know any more about computers than Hazel did. But he had more staff, and younger, better skilled staff that understood all the intricacies of data bases, search engines, and document storage online.
Their conversations, then, usually revolved more around departmental politics and personnel management more than they did on the ostensible subject of internet issues in archival science. She liked the people side of her work, and she liked talking to Clair, even though their conversations often left her feeling like they were just benefiting from the work of others... which, to be fair, they were, but that's what it means to be in charge, she thought.
"So you're going on after you're done here in Chicago to London?"
"That's the plan right now."
"Do you plan to stop by the British Museum, or Dr Williams' Library?"
"I hope so," Hazel smiled, "but that's not the main point of the trip. I'm going at the request of an old school friend, from college. She's a journalist, and has some questions for me."
"She's interviewing you?"
"No, that's not quite it. She's . . . you know, I'm not sure what she's doing right now. She's been in Pakistan for most of the last few years. We exchange e-mails from time to time. But I guess we both don't have many friends. I mean, not where we, here, that is . . ."
"I understand. There's work relationships, collegial connections, and there's friends. I'd call you a friend, Hazel, even if technically we barely know each other. It's a slippery word."
"It should be simple, shouldn't it."
"I don't know why it would be. Any human relationship is tied up in knots with every other, and how to keep track of which one takes priority over another, which person at any given time in more important than someone else . . . I have no idea how to do that. It's a Gordian Knot that's given to the Alexandrian Solution."
"Pardon me?"
"Oh, one of those classical references I drop into conversations too often. Forgive me."
"Well, I'm a librarian. Anything Alexandrian I should know about, but that missed me."
"I'm going back to the source himself, Alexander the Great, for whom the city and the library were named. It's said that, when presented with the original riddle of the Gordian Knot, Aristotle's prize pupil took out his sword and sliced through the knot."
"Ah."
"So, for some of us, he said speaking purely for himself, we cut the cord of close connection. Keep the ties loose and make as few as possible, that way you can keep track of what and who you are supposed to care about."
Hazel was about to dispute this point when it occurred to her that it was descriptive of her as well as it was of Clair, and she sat silently, looking down into her lap.
"The Alexandrian Solution is elegant and effective, but also it leads to the Alexandrian Dilemma."
Looking up, Hazel asked "which is?"
"A dissatisfaction at the things of this world."
They both sat quietly at this for a few moments, enough to establish that they were, indeed, friends enough to be silent with each other without undue anxiety.
Hazel broke the pause saying "You're right about dissatisfaction. I'm not even sure what I'm dissatisfied about these days, except that I like my work, but don't love it; I have a good life, but I don't . . . love it."
"There's a key word there."
"Yes there is."
Their conversations, then, usually revolved more around departmental politics and personnel management more than they did on the ostensible subject of internet issues in archival science. She liked the people side of her work, and she liked talking to Clair, even though their conversations often left her feeling like they were just benefiting from the work of others... which, to be fair, they were, but that's what it means to be in charge, she thought.
"So you're going on after you're done here in Chicago to London?"
"That's the plan right now."
"Do you plan to stop by the British Museum, or Dr Williams' Library?"
"I hope so," Hazel smiled, "but that's not the main point of the trip. I'm going at the request of an old school friend, from college. She's a journalist, and has some questions for me."
"She's interviewing you?"
"No, that's not quite it. She's . . . you know, I'm not sure what she's doing right now. She's been in Pakistan for most of the last few years. We exchange e-mails from time to time. But I guess we both don't have many friends. I mean, not where we, here, that is . . ."
"I understand. There's work relationships, collegial connections, and there's friends. I'd call you a friend, Hazel, even if technically we barely know each other. It's a slippery word."
"It should be simple, shouldn't it."
"I don't know why it would be. Any human relationship is tied up in knots with every other, and how to keep track of which one takes priority over another, which person at any given time in more important than someone else . . . I have no idea how to do that. It's a Gordian Knot that's given to the Alexandrian Solution."
"Pardon me?"
"Oh, one of those classical references I drop into conversations too often. Forgive me."
"Well, I'm a librarian. Anything Alexandrian I should know about, but that missed me."
"I'm going back to the source himself, Alexander the Great, for whom the city and the library were named. It's said that, when presented with the original riddle of the Gordian Knot, Aristotle's prize pupil took out his sword and sliced through the knot."
"Ah."
"So, for some of us, he said speaking purely for himself, we cut the cord of close connection. Keep the ties loose and make as few as possible, that way you can keep track of what and who you are supposed to care about."
Hazel was about to dispute this point when it occurred to her that it was descriptive of her as well as it was of Clair, and she sat silently, looking down into her lap.
"The Alexandrian Solution is elegant and effective, but also it leads to the Alexandrian Dilemma."
Looking up, Hazel asked "which is?"
"A dissatisfaction at the things of this world."
They both sat quietly at this for a few moments, enough to establish that they were, indeed, friends enough to be silent with each other without undue anxiety.
Hazel broke the pause saying "You're right about dissatisfaction. I'm not even sure what I'm dissatisfied about these days, except that I like my work, but don't love it; I have a good life, but I don't . . . love it."
"There's a key word there."
"Yes there is."
Chapter Sixteen
Lake Michigan curved across the lower horizon, with a flatter arc of distant horizon both darker and brighter with sunset approaching.
Hazel's flight swung out over the lake, and looped back towards land, the city, and the airport. The surface of the lake was less liquid than simply featureless, while the grid of Chicago was slowly lighting up below and to the north and south, rigid lines crossing and recrossing, extending out from the cluster of towers and pinnacles along the shore.
How other passengers could stay wedded to their phones, their tablets, the seat backs in front of them, during a landing, she didn't understand. If it was fear and a desire to avoid looking at the circumstances of one's demise, she could make sense of that, but it wasn't anxiety that seemed to keep most of the others seated near her from looking out of the windows. They just weren't interested. Hazel couldn't get enough of it -- the perspective, the occasional surprises of rooftop pools and hidden green patches, the unfamiliar angles on well-known architecture, all of the thrill of being in the air.
She had spent some time, both before they finally took off, back at the Port Columbus terminal, and during the relatively brief flight, communicating with her staff back at Cyrus College and at St. Fiacre's. For her to be gone for a week wasn't unprecedented, but it was normally something provided for well in advance, and usually tied in with funding and development calls, visits to donors (or prospective ones).
But the amount of vacation she had piled up, unused, was not small, and while St. Fiacre's could operate indefinitely without her presence, the college was a different proposition. It should, but it would work hard at not doing so. But after a dozen lengthy e-mails and a few well chosen cell calls, Hazel had opened up for herself a week's respite.
She also considered a phone call to Nicholas. In part because they had hit it off so well, in part because she didn't want him misinterpreting an extended silence after last weekend, and mostly because she had a nagging concern for his daughter. There was something Susie hadn't told her, and Hazel believed that given time, she would. On the other hand, would it seem forward, somewhat pushy for her to call and announce "oh, I'm leaving town for a few days." She decided it was a call she could make later, if then.
Plus, who knew how long this would take. She might fly to London, have a single conversation with Abigail, and fly back.
Which would still take at least three days after her day and a half here, which meant... well, she might be back by next Sunday's service, which she suddenly realized she had already been assuming she'd attend. With that realization, the announcement to shut off electronic devices and fasten seat belts changed the thoughts of everyone on board to a focus on those last few minutes of descent, and landing, and the scramble for the exits. Hazel shifted her thoughts in those same direction herself, even as she kept glancing out the window to watch the nearing rooftops and streetscapes flash past below.
Hazel's flight swung out over the lake, and looped back towards land, the city, and the airport. The surface of the lake was less liquid than simply featureless, while the grid of Chicago was slowly lighting up below and to the north and south, rigid lines crossing and recrossing, extending out from the cluster of towers and pinnacles along the shore.
How other passengers could stay wedded to their phones, their tablets, the seat backs in front of them, during a landing, she didn't understand. If it was fear and a desire to avoid looking at the circumstances of one's demise, she could make sense of that, but it wasn't anxiety that seemed to keep most of the others seated near her from looking out of the windows. They just weren't interested. Hazel couldn't get enough of it -- the perspective, the occasional surprises of rooftop pools and hidden green patches, the unfamiliar angles on well-known architecture, all of the thrill of being in the air.
She had spent some time, both before they finally took off, back at the Port Columbus terminal, and during the relatively brief flight, communicating with her staff back at Cyrus College and at St. Fiacre's. For her to be gone for a week wasn't unprecedented, but it was normally something provided for well in advance, and usually tied in with funding and development calls, visits to donors (or prospective ones).
But the amount of vacation she had piled up, unused, was not small, and while St. Fiacre's could operate indefinitely without her presence, the college was a different proposition. It should, but it would work hard at not doing so. But after a dozen lengthy e-mails and a few well chosen cell calls, Hazel had opened up for herself a week's respite.
She also considered a phone call to Nicholas. In part because they had hit it off so well, in part because she didn't want him misinterpreting an extended silence after last weekend, and mostly because she had a nagging concern for his daughter. There was something Susie hadn't told her, and Hazel believed that given time, she would. On the other hand, would it seem forward, somewhat pushy for her to call and announce "oh, I'm leaving town for a few days." She decided it was a call she could make later, if then.
Plus, who knew how long this would take. She might fly to London, have a single conversation with Abigail, and fly back.
Which would still take at least three days after her day and a half here, which meant... well, she might be back by next Sunday's service, which she suddenly realized she had already been assuming she'd attend. With that realization, the announcement to shut off electronic devices and fasten seat belts changed the thoughts of everyone on board to a focus on those last few minutes of descent, and landing, and the scramble for the exits. Hazel shifted her thoughts in those same direction herself, even as she kept glancing out the window to watch the nearing rooftops and streetscapes flash past below.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Chapter Fifteen
A new week, and a welcome respite from the close quarters and hot-house debates within Cyrus College, or even the petty politics of the library staff.
Library business was taking her to Chicago, where some colleagues at the Newberry Library had ideas for managing archives in digital form that Hazel wanted to hear about with her own ears, see directly what these interfaces and scanning technologies would look like.
Audrey, her senior archivist, had offered to drive her over to the Columbus airport, but -- on the St. Fiacre's side, at least -- there were funds for travel, including for a car service to come and pick her up and drive her directly to the terminal. The savings in parking fees was not really enough to balance the cost, but the net expense was not out of line with what she knew they could afford, and Hazel liked skipping the whole extra set of steps to get into the terminal and on her way.
Looking up from the files on her lap, she was almost startled to see how quickly the wide square bulk of parking garages and terminals had come to her. Thirty minutes was not long enough to really get into a project.
Hastily folding up her work and shoving it into her holdall with tablet and earphones, she was ready when the limo pulled up to her door. Carryon, holdall over one shoulder, into the building, through the ticketing and security and on to the gate, tumbling to a halt at an open seat.
"Delayed" read the gate sign. For the first time, even though they had to have been driving towards it the whole time on the way here, she noticed the dark clouds and heard rumbling through the overhead wide windows, deep and bass and lengthy.
Hazel was not a nervous flyer, and the prospect of turbulence didn't rattle her, but taking off into a thunderstorm certainly made no sense at all. Resignedly, she sat down, arranged her bags at her feet, and pulled out the tablet, tapping it into connectivity with the airport wifi.
Emails, a few messages through other services, posts or tweets or such. One message pointed her back to her phone, and a text message from the college which she quickly handled with a pair of strongly worded text messages herself.
Setting down the phone atop her carryon, she checked the tablet again to see a new email. The address was unfamiliar, but the salutation was from Abigail, a college friend she'd just been mentioning to Susie. Apparently she was working for a cable news network these days, or so the email address would indicate.
And apparently she had a pretty good arrangement going with them, because the email simply said "Would you like to come to London? The network will pay. I need to talk to someone, and you keep coming to mind. If your little library in the Midwest can spare you a week, I've got a big project in mind." Following were the details for making contact if she were interested, and willing.
To some degree, she thought, she was more interested than willing. She was available just now, too, but not indefinitely. This didn't sound open ended, though, and Abby had always been a pretty clear and direct person. What she was asking here was probably what she actually wanted: someone trustworthy to talk to.
For Hazel, another reason to say yes was the opportunity to be that trustworthy person, after so much time in the last year spent with people who never answered honestly even if you asked them what they wanted.
Library business was taking her to Chicago, where some colleagues at the Newberry Library had ideas for managing archives in digital form that Hazel wanted to hear about with her own ears, see directly what these interfaces and scanning technologies would look like.
Audrey, her senior archivist, had offered to drive her over to the Columbus airport, but -- on the St. Fiacre's side, at least -- there were funds for travel, including for a car service to come and pick her up and drive her directly to the terminal. The savings in parking fees was not really enough to balance the cost, but the net expense was not out of line with what she knew they could afford, and Hazel liked skipping the whole extra set of steps to get into the terminal and on her way.
Looking up from the files on her lap, she was almost startled to see how quickly the wide square bulk of parking garages and terminals had come to her. Thirty minutes was not long enough to really get into a project.
Hastily folding up her work and shoving it into her holdall with tablet and earphones, she was ready when the limo pulled up to her door. Carryon, holdall over one shoulder, into the building, through the ticketing and security and on to the gate, tumbling to a halt at an open seat.
"Delayed" read the gate sign. For the first time, even though they had to have been driving towards it the whole time on the way here, she noticed the dark clouds and heard rumbling through the overhead wide windows, deep and bass and lengthy.
Hazel was not a nervous flyer, and the prospect of turbulence didn't rattle her, but taking off into a thunderstorm certainly made no sense at all. Resignedly, she sat down, arranged her bags at her feet, and pulled out the tablet, tapping it into connectivity with the airport wifi.
Emails, a few messages through other services, posts or tweets or such. One message pointed her back to her phone, and a text message from the college which she quickly handled with a pair of strongly worded text messages herself.
Setting down the phone atop her carryon, she checked the tablet again to see a new email. The address was unfamiliar, but the salutation was from Abigail, a college friend she'd just been mentioning to Susie. Apparently she was working for a cable news network these days, or so the email address would indicate.
And apparently she had a pretty good arrangement going with them, because the email simply said "Would you like to come to London? The network will pay. I need to talk to someone, and you keep coming to mind. If your little library in the Midwest can spare you a week, I've got a big project in mind." Following were the details for making contact if she were interested, and willing.
To some degree, she thought, she was more interested than willing. She was available just now, too, but not indefinitely. This didn't sound open ended, though, and Abby had always been a pretty clear and direct person. What she was asking here was probably what she actually wanted: someone trustworthy to talk to.
For Hazel, another reason to say yes was the opportunity to be that trustworthy person, after so much time in the last year spent with people who never answered honestly even if you asked them what they wanted.
Chapter Fourteen
In the chief librarian's apartment, Hazel looked out across the Welsh Hills to the south under the moonlight.
Her last few predecessors had not used this suite of rooms, designated in Zula Maud Woodhull's original design as the residence for the head of St. Fiacre's. They had been married, one with children, and chose to live in Upper Sharon or nearby Granville. During those years, the chief librarian's apartment had been used by visiting scholars. For Hazel, this perk meant a savings that was already technically part of her pay package, plus the simple lodgings suited her.
From her usual reading chair, the view to the southwest included a stretch of horizon fringed with treetops, and tonight a squashed orb sinking into view, no longer full but bright enough to keep pulling her eyes up and away from the tablet in her lap.
Setting aside the riddles of data security and password protocols, she leaned back and looked quizzically at the moon. Growing up, about Susie's age, she had gotten a small telescope for her birthday. She'd watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" or something pre-Star Wars like that, and asked to have one to scan the craters and mountains of the moon for herself. Neil Armstrong had walked on its surface a few years earlier, and Hazel began to nurture a dream of going there herself.
Those dreams had included plans to study physics and astronomy, but not one but two dreadful experiences in math classes in a row had pushed that passion aside. Science took a back seat to the humanities, and a love for literature and books bloomed in the bare spot where the earlier dream died. College and library science and experience in public and academic libraries and, in what now seemed like a mere flicker of time, she was chief librarian and director here, looking at the moon from a distance.
The fact that she wouldn't have been able to go to the moon anyhow (since humanity had stopped going for some reason altogether) didn't soften the sudden pang of recollected excitement, the hopes so long forgotten of seeing the glare of unfiltered sunlight across a grey and dusty lunar surface. It was a less exciting vision than, say, riding a sandworm across a desert planet in search of legendary spices, but it had a tang of reality that other science fiction couldn't touch.
So what do I dream of now, she asked herself? If this is, as I've said to so many, my last professional position, do I simply focus my hopes for the future on a pleasant retirement? Many of the friends she'd gained through years in library work were now retired, and they did seem to enjoy the life well enough, even those in southern, summerful lands - Florida, Arizona, Mexico. She got emails or saw Facebook posts from them, shopping and doing water aerobics and . . . shopping.
Retirement wasn't something she was afraid of so much as it wasn't what she was looking for. Leisure, relaxation, indolence (Hazel noticed the touch of judgmentalism in that thought and let it pass) were just not what she planned to anticipate.
But was there any subject or location or activity that she now aspired to? What did she want to . . . do? She really didn't know. Right now, she wanted to get herself a small telescope, and just enjoy again that long-lost dream, and the harsh beauty of the moon's landscape in the eyepiece.
Her last few predecessors had not used this suite of rooms, designated in Zula Maud Woodhull's original design as the residence for the head of St. Fiacre's. They had been married, one with children, and chose to live in Upper Sharon or nearby Granville. During those years, the chief librarian's apartment had been used by visiting scholars. For Hazel, this perk meant a savings that was already technically part of her pay package, plus the simple lodgings suited her.
From her usual reading chair, the view to the southwest included a stretch of horizon fringed with treetops, and tonight a squashed orb sinking into view, no longer full but bright enough to keep pulling her eyes up and away from the tablet in her lap.
Setting aside the riddles of data security and password protocols, she leaned back and looked quizzically at the moon. Growing up, about Susie's age, she had gotten a small telescope for her birthday. She'd watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" or something pre-Star Wars like that, and asked to have one to scan the craters and mountains of the moon for herself. Neil Armstrong had walked on its surface a few years earlier, and Hazel began to nurture a dream of going there herself.
Those dreams had included plans to study physics and astronomy, but not one but two dreadful experiences in math classes in a row had pushed that passion aside. Science took a back seat to the humanities, and a love for literature and books bloomed in the bare spot where the earlier dream died. College and library science and experience in public and academic libraries and, in what now seemed like a mere flicker of time, she was chief librarian and director here, looking at the moon from a distance.
The fact that she wouldn't have been able to go to the moon anyhow (since humanity had stopped going for some reason altogether) didn't soften the sudden pang of recollected excitement, the hopes so long forgotten of seeing the glare of unfiltered sunlight across a grey and dusty lunar surface. It was a less exciting vision than, say, riding a sandworm across a desert planet in search of legendary spices, but it had a tang of reality that other science fiction couldn't touch.
So what do I dream of now, she asked herself? If this is, as I've said to so many, my last professional position, do I simply focus my hopes for the future on a pleasant retirement? Many of the friends she'd gained through years in library work were now retired, and they did seem to enjoy the life well enough, even those in southern, summerful lands - Florida, Arizona, Mexico. She got emails or saw Facebook posts from them, shopping and doing water aerobics and . . . shopping.
Retirement wasn't something she was afraid of so much as it wasn't what she was looking for. Leisure, relaxation, indolence (Hazel noticed the touch of judgmentalism in that thought and let it pass) were just not what she planned to anticipate.
But was there any subject or location or activity that she now aspired to? What did she want to . . . do? She really didn't know. Right now, she wanted to get herself a small telescope, and just enjoy again that long-lost dream, and the harsh beauty of the moon's landscape in the eyepiece.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Chapter Thirteen
Hazel and Susie walked down the stairs from St. Fiacre's to the campus of Cyrus College in single file.
Over her shoulder, Susie in the front said "I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me."
"I hope we talk again. Maybe just over good things, like your college plans, or just about life."
On the one landing between the blufftop and the terrace level where the college buildings stood, Susie turned and smiled at Hazel. "I don't really like plants much; is it okay if I don't want to go to Cyrus College?"
"Honey," Hazel said, smiling even more broadly, "I don't even know that I would have wanted to go to Cyrus College."
They walked more companionably on down the last flights of wooden stairs to the broad level creekbank openness where the college lodges stood, in two rows facing each other across The Range that ended, to the west, at the mounded foundation of the four story Old Main.
Susie said, in an apologetic tone: "It all looks kind of seedy and decrepit."
Hazel replied: "I'm just loving that you know the word decrepit."
The two women walked across the graveled path of The Range, and then to the footbridge across Auter Creek. Before they stepped onto the bridge deck, Susie said to Hazel: "I hope it makes sense, I mean, to you, that this stuff isn't really anything I want to make a big deal of."
"If we can keep talking about it all, I'm okay with that. But if you get more of this sort of treatment online, is it okay if I get some other adults involved?"
She thought for a moment, and then said to her on the bridge "Sure. I can work with that."
Hazel added, as they began to finish the trip across the water: "Let's just hope that it all winds down with the school getting involved and going after those kids. Once they know it's not something they can get away with, that should make them stop and think."
"I hope so, too," said Susie. She looked up at Hazel with a crooked smile. "Except, they think they did get away with it. Which they kinda did."
Then she turned and walked on across onto the opposite shore, as Hazel stood frowning.
Over her shoulder, Susie in the front said "I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me."
"I hope we talk again. Maybe just over good things, like your college plans, or just about life."
On the one landing between the blufftop and the terrace level where the college buildings stood, Susie turned and smiled at Hazel. "I don't really like plants much; is it okay if I don't want to go to Cyrus College?"
"Honey," Hazel said, smiling even more broadly, "I don't even know that I would have wanted to go to Cyrus College."
They walked more companionably on down the last flights of wooden stairs to the broad level creekbank openness where the college lodges stood, in two rows facing each other across The Range that ended, to the west, at the mounded foundation of the four story Old Main.
Susie said, in an apologetic tone: "It all looks kind of seedy and decrepit."
Hazel replied: "I'm just loving that you know the word decrepit."
The two women walked across the graveled path of The Range, and then to the footbridge across Auter Creek. Before they stepped onto the bridge deck, Susie said to Hazel: "I hope it makes sense, I mean, to you, that this stuff isn't really anything I want to make a big deal of."
"If we can keep talking about it all, I'm okay with that. But if you get more of this sort of treatment online, is it okay if I get some other adults involved?"
She thought for a moment, and then said to her on the bridge "Sure. I can work with that."
Hazel added, as they began to finish the trip across the water: "Let's just hope that it all winds down with the school getting involved and going after those kids. Once they know it's not something they can get away with, that should make them stop and think."
"I hope so, too," said Susie. She looked up at Hazel with a crooked smile. "Except, they think they did get away with it. Which they kinda did."
Then she turned and walked on across onto the opposite shore, as Hazel stood frowning.
Chapter Twelve
"You really don't have to talk to me."
"No, I don't mind, really."
"This is probably awkward for both of us."
"No, I'm fine."
"It's just not the sort of thing you can talk about and solve."
"I'm sure you're right about that."
"It's nice of you, but my dad is kind of all worked up, because he assumes I'm upset because I'm not upset. You know?"
Susie was sitting very upright and stiffly. She and Hazel were in the two chairs off to one side of the desk that were where most of the business of this office took place. Across the desk, only formal interactions occurred. To one side, in the two chairs, almost knee to knee, Hazel had received donors, expelled students, and talked to weeping staff members. Right now, she was talking to a new friend's youngest daughter about internet bullying, and it felt harder than trying to get a major gift out of a disaffected alumnus.
"Susie, I had a friend in college. Her name is Abigail. She would take on challenges and do things that people would think were kind of crazy, and what really upset her was that they'd be mad at her for not reacting the way they thought she should. She said that if guys were calm and under control, they got complimented, but if she stayed cool when everything was coming apart, people treated her like she was the weird one."
For the first time in their conversation, Susie smiled, and relaxed a bit more like a teenager into the wide upholstered armchair.
"That's what I mean, exactly. I want to be like Abigail, and no one wants me to be anything other than a teenager. Or what they think a teenager is. 'Ohhhh' and 'Ohhhhh' and all kinds of stupid 'I don't know what to dooooo' kind of whining. This is something I can handle."
Hazel leant forward in her chair. "What is the something, if I can ask?"
Susie sat, silently, then squinched further sideways, looking up into the coffered ceiling of the chief librarian's office. "It's not the guys, it's the other girls. Some of them just like making fun of girls who don't run with them. I know that. I know that. And I'm not going to. But they want to make sure I know I don't belong, and so they make me think I'm one of them. Do you know what I mean?"
"I think I do."
"They can call me a slut, or tell their skanky boyfriends to call me a slut on their web pages and stuff, and they think that will make me, like, go 'waaaaa, stop it' and honestly? I don't care. What they think, what anyone thinks that's not my friend? Which is like five people? So what. So what. That's what I think."
"I understand exactly what you mean."
"No, I don't mind, really."
"This is probably awkward for both of us."
"No, I'm fine."
"It's just not the sort of thing you can talk about and solve."
"I'm sure you're right about that."
"It's nice of you, but my dad is kind of all worked up, because he assumes I'm upset because I'm not upset. You know?"
Susie was sitting very upright and stiffly. She and Hazel were in the two chairs off to one side of the desk that were where most of the business of this office took place. Across the desk, only formal interactions occurred. To one side, in the two chairs, almost knee to knee, Hazel had received donors, expelled students, and talked to weeping staff members. Right now, she was talking to a new friend's youngest daughter about internet bullying, and it felt harder than trying to get a major gift out of a disaffected alumnus.
"Susie, I had a friend in college. Her name is Abigail. She would take on challenges and do things that people would think were kind of crazy, and what really upset her was that they'd be mad at her for not reacting the way they thought she should. She said that if guys were calm and under control, they got complimented, but if she stayed cool when everything was coming apart, people treated her like she was the weird one."
For the first time in their conversation, Susie smiled, and relaxed a bit more like a teenager into the wide upholstered armchair.
"That's what I mean, exactly. I want to be like Abigail, and no one wants me to be anything other than a teenager. Or what they think a teenager is. 'Ohhhh' and 'Ohhhhh' and all kinds of stupid 'I don't know what to dooooo' kind of whining. This is something I can handle."
Hazel leant forward in her chair. "What is the something, if I can ask?"
Susie sat, silently, then squinched further sideways, looking up into the coffered ceiling of the chief librarian's office. "It's not the guys, it's the other girls. Some of them just like making fun of girls who don't run with them. I know that. I know that. And I'm not going to. But they want to make sure I know I don't belong, and so they make me think I'm one of them. Do you know what I mean?"
"I think I do."
"They can call me a slut, or tell their skanky boyfriends to call me a slut on their web pages and stuff, and they think that will make me, like, go 'waaaaa, stop it' and honestly? I don't care. What they think, what anyone thinks that's not my friend? Which is like five people? So what. So what. That's what I think."
"I understand exactly what you mean."
Chapter Eleven
Susie was due to come by Hazel's office at 5:00 pm. Nicholas would drop his daughter off, then drive back around the long way to the west across the upper bridge and back through the village to the Lunchbox. Hazel and Susie would walk down from St. Fiacre's through the Cyrus College campus, across the Range, and on the footbridge across Auter Creek where they'd meet Nicholas and the two older girls for dinner . . . if the Lunchbox was open for dinner. If not, they'd come up with a Plan B.
The stacks of structural reports on the Old Main's 1859 timbers, the accreditation review portfolio, all the board memo compilations and complications went back into their folders and into or atop the file drawers across the office. They weren't resolved Friday night, and they could begin Monday morning unresolved as well. This young woman's situation intrigued Hazel, even though she was fairly certain she knew less about social media and the challenges of being a teenager than the girl's father assumed.
Smart phones and online tools were part of her daily life as an academic and administrator, but she didn't use them much for conversation and friendly communication. Truth be told, she didn't think of herself as having all that many friends, period. That was perhaps a natural outgrowth of being in an executive position, where those with whom you have the most in common are always those who have the most they need to get from you, and to whom you most need to be able to say no.
Students, even in such a small and theoretically close knit place as this, didn't try to become friends, and it was easy enough to not even have many conversations with them. That's what was so unusual for her about the encounter at the old Indian Mill on Saturday with the mediation circle, and the morning spent down at the Salvage Yard. She had conversations, where things were shared and said about lives and choices and decisions, and it was uncomfortable to realize how entirely unusual it all was. The last twenty-four hours probably included more direct communication with students than she'd had in her two years here to date.
She'd had friends in college, and none of them had kept in touch. Various career and scholarly tracks all led off in directions divergent enough that there was no point of intersection. Off to one coast or another, working abroad or returning to hometowns for marriage and family.
The worship service, if that was the right phrase for it, didn't quite make sense to Hazel. It wasn't what she was used to, insofar as she still had patterns of remembered religion to which she was used; it didn't really give her a feeling of religious insight or personal ecstasy or cosmic communion . . . but for more than just a few moments there in that warehouse, she felt like it was a family to which she belonged.
The stacks of structural reports on the Old Main's 1859 timbers, the accreditation review portfolio, all the board memo compilations and complications went back into their folders and into or atop the file drawers across the office. They weren't resolved Friday night, and they could begin Monday morning unresolved as well. This young woman's situation intrigued Hazel, even though she was fairly certain she knew less about social media and the challenges of being a teenager than the girl's father assumed.
Smart phones and online tools were part of her daily life as an academic and administrator, but she didn't use them much for conversation and friendly communication. Truth be told, she didn't think of herself as having all that many friends, period. That was perhaps a natural outgrowth of being in an executive position, where those with whom you have the most in common are always those who have the most they need to get from you, and to whom you most need to be able to say no.
Students, even in such a small and theoretically close knit place as this, didn't try to become friends, and it was easy enough to not even have many conversations with them. That's what was so unusual for her about the encounter at the old Indian Mill on Saturday with the mediation circle, and the morning spent down at the Salvage Yard. She had conversations, where things were shared and said about lives and choices and decisions, and it was uncomfortable to realize how entirely unusual it all was. The last twenty-four hours probably included more direct communication with students than she'd had in her two years here to date.
She'd had friends in college, and none of them had kept in touch. Various career and scholarly tracks all led off in directions divergent enough that there was no point of intersection. Off to one coast or another, working abroad or returning to hometowns for marriage and family.
The worship service, if that was the right phrase for it, didn't quite make sense to Hazel. It wasn't what she was used to, insofar as she still had patterns of remembered religion to which she was used; it didn't really give her a feeling of religious insight or personal ecstasy or cosmic communion . . . but for more than just a few moments there in that warehouse, she felt like it was a family to which she belonged.
Chapter Ten
Back to this world, these things, this now.
Hazel was more aware than most that Cyrus College was on its last legs. Options for moving in a new direction were few, and the momentum carrying them all forward, students, staff, the institution, was towards a very definite sort of cliff, or at least a drop-off like the edge of Auter Creek. The fall might not be too far, but once you were in the water, it was going to be the very devil to get out again.
Her predecessor had not managed the endowment well, to put it kindly. As student numbers had declined, rather than taking steps to either recruit more (or smarter) or to cut costs, he had simply increased the draw, pointing out to the trustees that investment income was up, and that this was a short term expedient.
The short term had been more like ten years of a nearly ten percent average draw, the student body got smaller, and while the last two faculty positions had been left unfilled, reducing costs, deferred maintenance on the aging collection of buildings that made up the campus was looming.
Then the economic collapse, the president's separation package, and Hazel's arrival combined to put her into a truly awkward position. Her predecessor, while a financial idiot, was a personable and generally well-intentioned nice guy. She had to be extremely careful with the trustees (whose behavior could fairly be described as idiotic as well) in sounding like she was blaming him for their current dire situation. This was a time when being right was no defense.
But it was also the case that she had to get the trustees to face facts. Her position here, at St. Fiacre's, just added to the blurring and distraction that probably both kept the previous president and the current board from looking directly at the situation of Cyrus College. There were two endowments, and very specific language about how they could be spent, which is to say the St. Fiacre's Residential Library funds couldn't be spent down on the college campus, and the Cyrus College endowment could not (were there any left) be spent up at the library.
Making the circumstances even odder, she had as chief librarian well-nigh dictatorial powers over policy, staff, and finances for St. Fiacre's, with the sole provision that investment decisions "should be made in consultation with the president of Cyrus College and the chairman of their board of trustees," the stipulation that led to the merging of the two positions some thirty years ago when the first flickers of the college's financial instability became in evidence.
As president of the college, she was largely under the direct authority of the board of trustees, a self-nominating body that had inbred itself into myopia and studied indifference . . . none of which mitigated their ability to block or stifle any new directions for Cyrus College. An elderly emerita of the faculty, now deceased, had shared with Hazel her understanding that this was because Mrs. Woodhull Martin's daughter Zula had planned, before her death, to return to America and settle in as chief librarian herself, keeping a weather eye on the project more her mother's passion in the valley below. But the deaths of both in relatively quick succession meant Zula Maud Woodhull never returned to this country, and her dreamt-of sinecure was now the island in the midst of floodwaters on which Hazel nervously, if securely stood.
So St. Fiacre's was stable and in fact fairly flush with money. The first merged chief librarian/president a few decades back had pushed for placing half the endowment into gold, which the Cyrus College trustees resisted and ultimately blocked, meaning that he then put more than two-thirds of the library endowment into precious metals. The staffing had never been excessive, perhaps even a bit too sparse to properly guide St. Fiacre's into the modern media era of library science, and the fees and scholarships had always been intelligently planned so that costs and budgets required no more than a three or even two and a half percent draw on the burgeoning endowment. It had grown to the point where her financial advisor, an external professional Hazel happily paid for four meetings a year over in Columbus, was warning that they had to spend some of their money soon or face consequences as a tax exempt institution.
Cyrus College's trustees were very proud, excessively and unreasonably so, of the fact that they paid no one and consulted nobody on their financial management. This was surely part of why they now had essentially no endowment to manage. The annual costs of running the college, including what tuition and fees were paid (when they were paid), and even without the maintenance some of the buildings so desperately needed, were going to run the endowment down to zero in less than three years. Other than to ask ritually of Hazel if she could use some of the library endowment to pay their bills, and to hear her equally formulaic "I'm sorry, my hands are tied," they took little or no account of the suggestions she made to them of how they might restructure the college, its mission, and the future of the school which was right now looking incredibly bleak.
Hazel was more aware than most that Cyrus College was on its last legs. Options for moving in a new direction were few, and the momentum carrying them all forward, students, staff, the institution, was towards a very definite sort of cliff, or at least a drop-off like the edge of Auter Creek. The fall might not be too far, but once you were in the water, it was going to be the very devil to get out again.
Her predecessor had not managed the endowment well, to put it kindly. As student numbers had declined, rather than taking steps to either recruit more (or smarter) or to cut costs, he had simply increased the draw, pointing out to the trustees that investment income was up, and that this was a short term expedient.
The short term had been more like ten years of a nearly ten percent average draw, the student body got smaller, and while the last two faculty positions had been left unfilled, reducing costs, deferred maintenance on the aging collection of buildings that made up the campus was looming.
Then the economic collapse, the president's separation package, and Hazel's arrival combined to put her into a truly awkward position. Her predecessor, while a financial idiot, was a personable and generally well-intentioned nice guy. She had to be extremely careful with the trustees (whose behavior could fairly be described as idiotic as well) in sounding like she was blaming him for their current dire situation. This was a time when being right was no defense.
But it was also the case that she had to get the trustees to face facts. Her position here, at St. Fiacre's, just added to the blurring and distraction that probably both kept the previous president and the current board from looking directly at the situation of Cyrus College. There were two endowments, and very specific language about how they could be spent, which is to say the St. Fiacre's Residential Library funds couldn't be spent down on the college campus, and the Cyrus College endowment could not (were there any left) be spent up at the library.
Making the circumstances even odder, she had as chief librarian well-nigh dictatorial powers over policy, staff, and finances for St. Fiacre's, with the sole provision that investment decisions "should be made in consultation with the president of Cyrus College and the chairman of their board of trustees," the stipulation that led to the merging of the two positions some thirty years ago when the first flickers of the college's financial instability became in evidence.
As president of the college, she was largely under the direct authority of the board of trustees, a self-nominating body that had inbred itself into myopia and studied indifference . . . none of which mitigated their ability to block or stifle any new directions for Cyrus College. An elderly emerita of the faculty, now deceased, had shared with Hazel her understanding that this was because Mrs. Woodhull Martin's daughter Zula had planned, before her death, to return to America and settle in as chief librarian herself, keeping a weather eye on the project more her mother's passion in the valley below. But the deaths of both in relatively quick succession meant Zula Maud Woodhull never returned to this country, and her dreamt-of sinecure was now the island in the midst of floodwaters on which Hazel nervously, if securely stood.
So St. Fiacre's was stable and in fact fairly flush with money. The first merged chief librarian/president a few decades back had pushed for placing half the endowment into gold, which the Cyrus College trustees resisted and ultimately blocked, meaning that he then put more than two-thirds of the library endowment into precious metals. The staffing had never been excessive, perhaps even a bit too sparse to properly guide St. Fiacre's into the modern media era of library science, and the fees and scholarships had always been intelligently planned so that costs and budgets required no more than a three or even two and a half percent draw on the burgeoning endowment. It had grown to the point where her financial advisor, an external professional Hazel happily paid for four meetings a year over in Columbus, was warning that they had to spend some of their money soon or face consequences as a tax exempt institution.
Cyrus College's trustees were very proud, excessively and unreasonably so, of the fact that they paid no one and consulted nobody on their financial management. This was surely part of why they now had essentially no endowment to manage. The annual costs of running the college, including what tuition and fees were paid (when they were paid), and even without the maintenance some of the buildings so desperately needed, were going to run the endowment down to zero in less than three years. Other than to ask ritually of Hazel if she could use some of the library endowment to pay their bills, and to hear her equally formulaic "I'm sorry, my hands are tied," they took little or no account of the suggestions she made to them of how they might restructure the college, its mission, and the future of the school which was right now looking incredibly bleak.
Chapter Nine
The service, Hazel thought as she shuffled efficiently through her built-up stack of administrative obligations, was hard to categorize.
It wasn't at all like the sort of "follow the bulletin" worship programs she recalled from childhood. You got your paper folder at the door, and much of the service was spent checking in on the typed outline or flipping over to the right page in the hymnal.
The Salvage Yard didn't have a bulletin, and didn't really seem to have a structure. They sang two or three songs, and then someone (not Nicholas) led a prayer, then they sang another song, there was a statement Nicholas made in a soft but emphatic voice, and then everyone was up again and out of their chairs moving around, with people turning to her and extending a hand to say "Peace be with you." Hazel could tell some said "And also with you" in the background noise, which she began to respond with as well, though some were clearly saying something longer, the exact words varying but usually involving peace, and Jesus.
Then everyone sat down, a few things were said by different people about events coming up here, at the college, and in town at a soup kitchen they apparently worked at. Nicholas read out of a Bible whose translation was striking, something clearly out of New Testament scriptures but in forceful, modern language, and then he began to speak.
She was sitting there, staring out her window into the tangle of branches across the one side, trying to recall what he had said. There were phrases, images that were sticking with her, but not entire sentences or a flow of argument exactly.
"A journey with others," "traveling through darkness with light enough for the next step," "hope is a gift, not an effort we failed to make if we find ourselves without it," and finally "when Jesus said 'I will be with you always' he was talking, among other things, about right now, about being with you."
Then there was a shifting, and some people moved to the floor, sitting flat or kneeling, others turned and knelt into their chairs, while a few moved to behind the group and stood, some eyes open and others closed with their hands extended and facing upwards.
Behind Nicholas a table could now be seen to have a candle, a pair of flowers in a lovely blue glass vase, and a large contemporary unframed icon, showing Jesus and his disciples in conversation depicted in the spiky, angular lines of an eastern Orthodox style image.
The music rose up softly, in a short line of chant that everyone sang over and over again. Most, but not all were looking at the candle, or the icon, or both; many, but not everyone had their hands clasped or folded (except those standing to the rear), and Hazel found herself doing the same, not quite bowing her head, but looking about more than looking at the table which now defined a certain "front" of the worship gathering.
It was almost minor key, but she wasn't sure, and the words were "O Lord, hear my prayer; O Lord, hear my prayer; In my prayer, answer me," words which she soon began to sing softly herself. After a few repetitions, she closed her eyes, and almost felt as if she was falling asleep, but did not stop singing.
A few shifted chords and the song came to an end, and then there was silence. There were sounds of breathing and occasional shifting of weight and scraping against the bare concrete floor by some of the chairs (the table with the candle and icon sat on a lovely Persian rug whose pattern drew Hazel's eye as much as the flame did).
She was not sure how long the silence lasted, and felt no desire to check her watch, a sensation she realized marked much of her average day. They all sat or knelt or stood, and the room felt calm, expectant, ready in some anticipatory way.
Then she heard Nicholas' voice gently begin a spoken, impromptu prayer, with first names coming up that she recognized as being some of those among her fellow worshipers here, and then with a slight shock heard her name - or was it another Hazel? - that he asked for "special blessing" on from God.
And then it was over, and everyone began to turn and speak in everyday tones to each other as they all rose and stretched, and it seemed to her that they were exiting one kind of space and entering another even as it had been the old chilly warehouse the whole time.
It wasn't at all like the sort of "follow the bulletin" worship programs she recalled from childhood. You got your paper folder at the door, and much of the service was spent checking in on the typed outline or flipping over to the right page in the hymnal.
The Salvage Yard didn't have a bulletin, and didn't really seem to have a structure. They sang two or three songs, and then someone (not Nicholas) led a prayer, then they sang another song, there was a statement Nicholas made in a soft but emphatic voice, and then everyone was up again and out of their chairs moving around, with people turning to her and extending a hand to say "Peace be with you." Hazel could tell some said "And also with you" in the background noise, which she began to respond with as well, though some were clearly saying something longer, the exact words varying but usually involving peace, and Jesus.
Then everyone sat down, a few things were said by different people about events coming up here, at the college, and in town at a soup kitchen they apparently worked at. Nicholas read out of a Bible whose translation was striking, something clearly out of New Testament scriptures but in forceful, modern language, and then he began to speak.
She was sitting there, staring out her window into the tangle of branches across the one side, trying to recall what he had said. There were phrases, images that were sticking with her, but not entire sentences or a flow of argument exactly.
"A journey with others," "traveling through darkness with light enough for the next step," "hope is a gift, not an effort we failed to make if we find ourselves without it," and finally "when Jesus said 'I will be with you always' he was talking, among other things, about right now, about being with you."
Then there was a shifting, and some people moved to the floor, sitting flat or kneeling, others turned and knelt into their chairs, while a few moved to behind the group and stood, some eyes open and others closed with their hands extended and facing upwards.
Behind Nicholas a table could now be seen to have a candle, a pair of flowers in a lovely blue glass vase, and a large contemporary unframed icon, showing Jesus and his disciples in conversation depicted in the spiky, angular lines of an eastern Orthodox style image.
The music rose up softly, in a short line of chant that everyone sang over and over again. Most, but not all were looking at the candle, or the icon, or both; many, but not everyone had their hands clasped or folded (except those standing to the rear), and Hazel found herself doing the same, not quite bowing her head, but looking about more than looking at the table which now defined a certain "front" of the worship gathering.
It was almost minor key, but she wasn't sure, and the words were "O Lord, hear my prayer; O Lord, hear my prayer; In my prayer, answer me," words which she soon began to sing softly herself. After a few repetitions, she closed her eyes, and almost felt as if she was falling asleep, but did not stop singing.
A few shifted chords and the song came to an end, and then there was silence. There were sounds of breathing and occasional shifting of weight and scraping against the bare concrete floor by some of the chairs (the table with the candle and icon sat on a lovely Persian rug whose pattern drew Hazel's eye as much as the flame did).
She was not sure how long the silence lasted, and felt no desire to check her watch, a sensation she realized marked much of her average day. They all sat or knelt or stood, and the room felt calm, expectant, ready in some anticipatory way.
Then she heard Nicholas' voice gently begin a spoken, impromptu prayer, with first names coming up that she recognized as being some of those among her fellow worshipers here, and then with a slight shock heard her name - or was it another Hazel? - that he asked for "special blessing" on from God.
And then it was over, and everyone began to turn and speak in everyday tones to each other as they all rose and stretched, and it seemed to her that they were exiting one kind of space and entering another even as it had been the old chilly warehouse the whole time.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Chapter Eight
Sunday afternoon in her office up in St. Fiacre's was a moment back in the usual ritual.
Fundraising letters, student records, grading appeals, maintenance requests -- this was the best time to polish off all the detail work that never seemed to get finished through the week. Faculty and affiliate teachers, other office staff along with her one other administrative counterpart, the grandly named and hopelessly obtuse Chancellor, matters of protocol and timing for visiting scholars to the library, or the ever-elusive quest for some form of accreditation to the college, all caused regular interruptions through weekdays to the necessary operations of the day-to-day operations of the paired institutions.
Hazel was glad for a chance to sort and sift without a sound in the building other than her CD of Chopin nocturnes and the occasional creak of a window (does that need replacing?) or the groan of bit of subflooring (is it a structural matter?) as she walked back and forth from her desk to the long expanse of the conference room table where she could shuffle her piles and stacks of various "important" papers.
As she worked, she'd kept thinking about the last part of her conversation with Nicholas, about his daughters, and especially the youngest one. Apparently there had been some sort of concern over a social media issue, where some girls at school had put her picture, a shot of her face, up on a list of girls with some inappropriate language about them. He'd been awkwardly amusing about his inability to say what it was the internet pages had said about her. Apparently it was rude, but not profane.
He'd hoped Hazel had some advice for him about the subject, but her main reaction had been more along the lines of "seriously, that's all?" In the admissions conferences, and regarding disciplinary issues on campus, she'd become somewhat numb to the sheer willful stupidity of what young people posted about themselves, let alone about others. She knew Nicholas was hoping for some sort of feminine perspective on his parenting problem, but she'd not been a parent, and she wasn't even sure being feminine today was something a woman in her late thirties could even offer useful advice on.
Looking back out the north-facing windows of her office, it was a good view to reflect on these last couple days. The Lunchbox could be picked out as a lower roofline along Upper Sharon Road curving under the hill; the Memorial Church in white and gold just beyond; the mill where this latest chapter began in peeling green and rustic red obscured by brush and bushes along the creekbank, next to the steel frame bridge crossing Elliot's Run where it poured into Auter Creek, the road disappearing out of view to her right to where, a mile or so along, it met with Welsh Hills and Sharon Valley Road at the crossroads where the Salvage Yard sat.
Unaffected by these last few days were College Hall below, its central cupola four stories high yet still below her and to the left, and the rows of low-slung buildings, timber framed and cedar-shake roofed, plodding two by two from the historic brick hall to the west down The Range until its eastern end at the cast iron bridge across Auter Creek.
College Hall had roof problems, timber problems, and all around age problems. Hazel was not yet old enough to have them herself, but she was old enough to be thinking about them more than she had in her twenties. The years took their toll, and the hall had seen a century and a half of them.
Oddly enough, when Mrs. Woodhull Martin had left the endowment for St. Fiacre's, she had been very specific that it was for the library and the library's operations, and nothing else. Cyrus College had been left effectively nothing; Miss Zula Maud had left the college such nest egg as they'd ever had, but it hadn't been much, and their graduates had never been big on giving. Or maybe, Hazel reflected, Cyrus College had never been big on asking. The legend was that Mrs. Woodhull Martin had simply not acknowledged in her late 80s that she might be near to passing from the scene, and she had intended a generous endowment for the college, and just never got around to it before her not entirely unexpected death. Not unexpected, at least, to Zula Maud and the staff at Bredon's Norton, if a very real shock to Victoria herself.
She had made a special provision not long before her death, executed just after, which benefited not the bereft college, but a rather indifferent town. Just at the point where Upper Sharon Road branched beyond the steel frame bridge over Elliott's Run, where a small triangle of land had long stood, Zula Maud had executed a wish of her mother's. She had erected a life-size bronze statue of Mary Hartwell Catherwood, Ohio's first best selling novelist, one of the first bronze statues of a woman for any reason at all, honoring her life and work -- she was born more than a dozen miles south of Upper Sharon, but had set some of her writing back in the 1890s and early 1900s in this town, perhaps having taught here as she had in an assortment of small schools around the county thirty years previous.
There was no indication that Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin had ever met Mary Hartwell Catherwood, but she obviously read her books, and that admiration had led to the prominent plinth and bronze sculpture at the entrance to the town.
At any rate, the statue had a maintenance endowment in the county bank (one of Hazel's multitudinous responsibilities to manage), but Cyrus College did not. Creating something of the sort out of nothing immediately at hand was one of the main reasons she'd been hired for the job. It was Hazel's opinion, at this point, that the trustees had made a definite mistake.
Fundraising letters, student records, grading appeals, maintenance requests -- this was the best time to polish off all the detail work that never seemed to get finished through the week. Faculty and affiliate teachers, other office staff along with her one other administrative counterpart, the grandly named and hopelessly obtuse Chancellor, matters of protocol and timing for visiting scholars to the library, or the ever-elusive quest for some form of accreditation to the college, all caused regular interruptions through weekdays to the necessary operations of the day-to-day operations of the paired institutions.
Hazel was glad for a chance to sort and sift without a sound in the building other than her CD of Chopin nocturnes and the occasional creak of a window (does that need replacing?) or the groan of bit of subflooring (is it a structural matter?) as she walked back and forth from her desk to the long expanse of the conference room table where she could shuffle her piles and stacks of various "important" papers.
As she worked, she'd kept thinking about the last part of her conversation with Nicholas, about his daughters, and especially the youngest one. Apparently there had been some sort of concern over a social media issue, where some girls at school had put her picture, a shot of her face, up on a list of girls with some inappropriate language about them. He'd been awkwardly amusing about his inability to say what it was the internet pages had said about her. Apparently it was rude, but not profane.
He'd hoped Hazel had some advice for him about the subject, but her main reaction had been more along the lines of "seriously, that's all?" In the admissions conferences, and regarding disciplinary issues on campus, she'd become somewhat numb to the sheer willful stupidity of what young people posted about themselves, let alone about others. She knew Nicholas was hoping for some sort of feminine perspective on his parenting problem, but she'd not been a parent, and she wasn't even sure being feminine today was something a woman in her late thirties could even offer useful advice on.
Looking back out the north-facing windows of her office, it was a good view to reflect on these last couple days. The Lunchbox could be picked out as a lower roofline along Upper Sharon Road curving under the hill; the Memorial Church in white and gold just beyond; the mill where this latest chapter began in peeling green and rustic red obscured by brush and bushes along the creekbank, next to the steel frame bridge crossing Elliot's Run where it poured into Auter Creek, the road disappearing out of view to her right to where, a mile or so along, it met with Welsh Hills and Sharon Valley Road at the crossroads where the Salvage Yard sat.
Unaffected by these last few days were College Hall below, its central cupola four stories high yet still below her and to the left, and the rows of low-slung buildings, timber framed and cedar-shake roofed, plodding two by two from the historic brick hall to the west down The Range until its eastern end at the cast iron bridge across Auter Creek.
College Hall had roof problems, timber problems, and all around age problems. Hazel was not yet old enough to have them herself, but she was old enough to be thinking about them more than she had in her twenties. The years took their toll, and the hall had seen a century and a half of them.
Oddly enough, when Mrs. Woodhull Martin had left the endowment for St. Fiacre's, she had been very specific that it was for the library and the library's operations, and nothing else. Cyrus College had been left effectively nothing; Miss Zula Maud had left the college such nest egg as they'd ever had, but it hadn't been much, and their graduates had never been big on giving. Or maybe, Hazel reflected, Cyrus College had never been big on asking. The legend was that Mrs. Woodhull Martin had simply not acknowledged in her late 80s that she might be near to passing from the scene, and she had intended a generous endowment for the college, and just never got around to it before her not entirely unexpected death. Not unexpected, at least, to Zula Maud and the staff at Bredon's Norton, if a very real shock to Victoria herself.
She had made a special provision not long before her death, executed just after, which benefited not the bereft college, but a rather indifferent town. Just at the point where Upper Sharon Road branched beyond the steel frame bridge over Elliott's Run, where a small triangle of land had long stood, Zula Maud had executed a wish of her mother's. She had erected a life-size bronze statue of Mary Hartwell Catherwood, Ohio's first best selling novelist, one of the first bronze statues of a woman for any reason at all, honoring her life and work -- she was born more than a dozen miles south of Upper Sharon, but had set some of her writing back in the 1890s and early 1900s in this town, perhaps having taught here as she had in an assortment of small schools around the county thirty years previous.
There was no indication that Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin had ever met Mary Hartwell Catherwood, but she obviously read her books, and that admiration had led to the prominent plinth and bronze sculpture at the entrance to the town.
At any rate, the statue had a maintenance endowment in the county bank (one of Hazel's multitudinous responsibilities to manage), but Cyrus College did not. Creating something of the sort out of nothing immediately at hand was one of the main reasons she'd been hired for the job. It was Hazel's opinion, at this point, that the trustees had made a definite mistake.
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