Another search through the drawers, and they seem as if there's more stuff in them than there was ten minutes ago, but still no key.
The key couldn't be many places. He'd just used it yesterday, and after opening the door, unless it was still in the lock, it couldn't…
Wait. Oh, right.
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Monday, May 12, 2014
Interruption
Kyle slowly floated up from sleep to an awareness of the sounds and smells around him.
As Sulaiman al-Idris, he was at home in a bedroll, in the desert, in his robes pulled tightly around him. As Kyle, the American boy, there was still a faint jolt of transition from comfortable sleep to the harsh surroundings of rock and rough cloth and rugged horizon. His body was well-accustomed to sleeping where his childhood friends would have found nothing but wakeful discomfort, but it was on waking up that the change from what he had known to the life he knew here was most acutely uncomfortable, even if only for a moment.
The light of dawn was barely a bar across the eastern edge of the sky, and inside the tent it was more of a hint of lines and edges than it was a visible illumination. Sulaiman could make out the flap to the east, and some huddled forms nearby, or perhaps they were just packs and gear piled around him.
Huzzaini was not nearby, his sleeping patch a concavity. He was probably outside lighting the stove and heating water for their morning coffee. A conduit for information back to the leadership of their band, but not a faithless man, Sulaiman thought. He had been a strong support and a courageous comrade on the battlefield in many a firefight, even if he understood that his first job was to keep an eye on the American, Kyle, whatever Sulaiman the mujahadeen might do. They each had a sat phone, and some of Huzzaini's conversations were not within his earshot, but Sulaiman was content. Truth and proof each had their own tests, and time would reveal all to Allah. Always.
It was not time yet to get up and break camp, but that time was coming. Sulaiman was usually an early riser, even if not as early as Huzzaini. Today, after the rigors of the passage over the last mountain range, it felt good just to stay in the sleeping bag an extra fifteen minutes or so.
With the mountain chill, he had kept his clothing mostly down in the foot of his bag, and without getting out, he began the contortionist writhings to get his outer clothing on. Completing that, he slid himself up and out, sitting in the top end of the bag while swiveling his hips about until he could push his feet towards the flap, and reach out in the dark to the felt location of his boots, tugging them on and lacing them back into ankle-bracing security.
Sulaiman pushed his booted feet out the flap, and wrenched himself upright just outside of the tent, reaching behind to pull down the zipper and quietly close it for those inside, when he stopped.
In the pre-dawn light, all around the bowl in which sat their trio of tents, were robed and rifled fighters, cocked and ready, all looking directly at him. Directly before him, a single figure, at port arms, for whom Kyle did not need light to know was Huzzaini. They stood and looked at each other for some time.
As Sulaiman al-Idris, he was at home in a bedroll, in the desert, in his robes pulled tightly around him. As Kyle, the American boy, there was still a faint jolt of transition from comfortable sleep to the harsh surroundings of rock and rough cloth and rugged horizon. His body was well-accustomed to sleeping where his childhood friends would have found nothing but wakeful discomfort, but it was on waking up that the change from what he had known to the life he knew here was most acutely uncomfortable, even if only for a moment.
The light of dawn was barely a bar across the eastern edge of the sky, and inside the tent it was more of a hint of lines and edges than it was a visible illumination. Sulaiman could make out the flap to the east, and some huddled forms nearby, or perhaps they were just packs and gear piled around him.
Huzzaini was not nearby, his sleeping patch a concavity. He was probably outside lighting the stove and heating water for their morning coffee. A conduit for information back to the leadership of their band, but not a faithless man, Sulaiman thought. He had been a strong support and a courageous comrade on the battlefield in many a firefight, even if he understood that his first job was to keep an eye on the American, Kyle, whatever Sulaiman the mujahadeen might do. They each had a sat phone, and some of Huzzaini's conversations were not within his earshot, but Sulaiman was content. Truth and proof each had their own tests, and time would reveal all to Allah. Always.
It was not time yet to get up and break camp, but that time was coming. Sulaiman was usually an early riser, even if not as early as Huzzaini. Today, after the rigors of the passage over the last mountain range, it felt good just to stay in the sleeping bag an extra fifteen minutes or so.
With the mountain chill, he had kept his clothing mostly down in the foot of his bag, and without getting out, he began the contortionist writhings to get his outer clothing on. Completing that, he slid himself up and out, sitting in the top end of the bag while swiveling his hips about until he could push his feet towards the flap, and reach out in the dark to the felt location of his boots, tugging them on and lacing them back into ankle-bracing security.
Sulaiman pushed his booted feet out the flap, and wrenched himself upright just outside of the tent, reaching behind to pull down the zipper and quietly close it for those inside, when he stopped.
In the pre-dawn light, all around the bowl in which sat their trio of tents, were robed and rifled fighters, cocked and ready, all looking directly at him. Directly before him, a single figure, at port arms, for whom Kyle did not need light to know was Huzzaini. They stood and looked at each other for some time.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Chapter Four
"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.
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.
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.
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