Sunday\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 5\/29\/05<\/p>\n
Ought 5.\u00a0 40 years after high school ended.\u00a0 High school seems so long ago.\u00a0 Minneapolis and St. Paul, Hubbard County, Lindstrom, Appleton, Connersville, Crawfordsville, and Muncie.\u00a0 So many places, so much life frittered away.\u00a0 Yet I feel content.\u00a0 Odd, isn’t it?<\/p>\n
I’ve spent lifetimes as a drunk, as an administrator, as a scholar and a drifter.\u00a0 As a lover, and a fearer, an advocate and a hermit.\u00a0 From this vantage point I think of two things:\u00a0 John Desteian’s remark that it is a tragedy I had no students, and Kate’s comment last week about myEducation of a Docent<\/i> having the virtue of being “existential”, by which she meant rooted now, rather than in a future ambition.\u00a0 I don’t know whether to evaluate these notions as critical, pejorative or as statements of fact.\u00a0 Perhaps they are both.<\/p>\n
This is my 58th Memorial Day and I feel at ease.\u00a0 Not because I have accomplished much, though I feel I’ve met the criteria of having won not just one but several “victories for\u00a0 humanity.”\u00a0 “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” – Horace Mann<\/a>\u00a0 I know the end point of this Pilgrimage, though not its epilogue. Perhaps I will not be at ease tomorrow, things change, but today I am calm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sunday\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 5\/29\/05 Ought 5.\u00a0 40 years after high school ended.\u00a0 High school seems so long ago.\u00a0 Minneapolis and St. Paul, Hubbard County, Lindstrom, Appleton, Connersville, Crawfordsville, and Muncie.\u00a0 So many places, so much life frittered away.\u00a0 Yet I feel content.\u00a0 Odd, isn’t it? I’ve spent lifetimes as a drunk, as an administrator, as a scholar … Continue reading From the Archives, Ten Years Ago<\/span>