Memorial Days Past and Present

MEMORIAL DAY 1957

White sky, shimmering as it salutes the day of commemoration.

Decoration Day, 1957

Begins at the court house in Dixon

With Taps and an echo.

Old men and young men,

Proud men and broken men,

Sit with their families and friends,

Sweltering in the early morning heat.

They gather in thankfulness,

Or sorrow,

Or both.

Memories of the Great War are carried with pride.

Memories of the Not So Great War are carefully tucked away,

In secret pains that no bottle can erase.

But they try.

I long to see a maple tree leaf turn inside out.

I pray for a storm as sweat drips into my eyes.

Carefully, my lips meet the mouthpiece

And I begin to play Taps.

MEMORIAL DAY 2012

An old man sits alone,

Eight thousand feet above sea level.

Appreciating white-framed peaks

Seen through pine tree filters.

Crisp breezes temper the sun’s heat.

Sixty-eight years of memories

Spread out against the rocks.

Good memories and painful ones,

Examined with white gloved care.

High country silence,

Accompanied by an occasional Mountain Jay,

Frame his celebration of peace,

His celebration of solitude,

His celebration of his life so far.

Memorial Day and Memory Books

I wonder if funeral homes still have those Memory Books at the door for people to sign. I know Jackie Einstein had a couple of books—one for names and addresses, the other for messages anyone wanted to leave to her and the rest of Walter’s family. I also know that there are virtual books for people at a distance to sign and leave messages. I’ve come to appreciate the importance of these artifacts.

Holidays prompt me to think about the old days, which prompts me to rummage around in my boxes of pictures and keepsakes. This rummaging caused me to find a Memory Book from Tapp Funeral Home in Providence, Kentucky, dated 1954.

My oldest sister, Retha Dare, was born in 1927 and passed away in September, 1954. She died in childbirth, delivering her fifth child. I was ten years old at the time and remember the occasion vividly. She was so young. After her fourth child she was told she should not have any more children; to do so would almost certainly endanger her own life and the life of the child. I remember being at her house frequently over the years. I was a nosy boy; still am. I remember seeing a sort of workbook filled with pictures and charts; she was trying to calculate her menstrual cycles. I now feel inextricable pain at what she must have gone through. It was 1954. We knew almost nothing about birth control. She got pregnant. She died. Fortunately her child lived. But five children, the oldest being 10 (10 days older than I), were left without a mother. They scattered to the wind.

As wrenching and anger provoking as this is,  given recent arguments about birth control and women’s choice, that’s not what I’m wondering about right now. It’s the Memory Book that has captured my imagination. And of course, given my mother’s penchant for taking pictures of folks, tucked away in the back of the book I found a picture negative of my sister in the casket. Blew my mind.

I’m looking at the names and remembering the people filing in, viewing my sister, sitting quietly for awhile, going out back to smoke, talking quietly, paying their respects to my family. Their names, faces, and voices pop out at me like old black and white movies: Nellie Rinehammer, Amanthus Lloyd, Mason Guess, Sidney Webb, Lindy Cullen, Strauther Harvey, Doy Lovan, Pearl Lovan, Grady Lovan (my grandmother) Virginia Clevenger, Don Ferguson, Les Gobin,  Teenie Stevens, Curtis Yarbrough, and on and on and on.

These faded signatures offer a testament to the fact that these people existed in that place at that time to mark the passing of my sister.

As an old man, I’ve come to love small towns, especially that small town of Providence, Kentucky, and especially as it exists, fixed in my memory, as jogged by such things as 60-year-old Memory Books.

Professors, Food Stamps, and Stories

I read an article recently about a number of professors who are receiving food stamps. My first reaction: Them damn liberal professors are at it again, feeding at the public trough. Then I thought, no, what this means is, like some of our military folks, there is another group of people who cannot make a living at their chosen profession. The proof is that their salaries are low enough for them to quality for the stamps.

While I’m appalled at both situations, it’s the professorial one that I’m wondering about right now. And this started me thinking about professors I have known.

At the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth I served as dean of Continuing Education for a spell. One evening I noticed a forty-something-year-old man sort of wandering around the reception area and looking uncomfortable. I struck up a conversation and found that he was a successful businessman in Southern New England. The man wanted to prove something to himself. Years ago, he had started college but never finished, and now wondered if he really had what it took to do college-level work. I recognized him as we talked, and knew him to be politically conservative with a strong sense of self-confidence, and a sense of humor. He ran a right-leaning morning talk show out of his diner—one of my favorite diners in the area. So, I suggested that he just take one course and see how it went. I suggested a rigorous course taught by a professor who was respected by students. He took my suggestion, and agreed to check back with me on the progress of the course.

A month later, the businessman walked into my office with a big smile on his face. “The professor is out of his mind, the course is great, I learned a lot, and thank you,” he said. Although he decided not to pursue a degree, the decision was made with confidence and for the right reasons; he knew he could handle whatever the University had to offer.

To me, this story epitomizes the best of what a professor can do. This professor, a left-leaning friend of mine, was a practicing Irishman, president of the American Federation of Teachers union at UMassD,  who took me on several Irish drinking tours of Fall River, Massachusetts—wonderful experiences by the way; he was a master story teller and politician in the best sense of that word. He was witty, engaging, and loved to challenge his students. His long career provided for a marginal retirement income.

There are lots of these people out there. A friend of mine grew up in South Boston, the son of factory workers. I watched him engage freshman English students, students who had difficulty reading and writing, students who had not survived in college elsewhere, students for whom this college experience was their last hope. This professor could relate. They learned. He is now Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, still teaching, now at Goddard College. His income has never been anywhere near commensurate with his status, but he is a professional who does what he loves.

Two friends retired from a major pharmaceutical company and now are professors at a large community college, he teaching mathematics, she English. Both teach at what used to be called a “remedial” level, and although the adjective has changed the reality has not. The students come to the school with serious issues of all kinds—physical, professional, personal—and professors charged with helping them do not stop at the mathematical and reading/writing concerns. It’s impossible. So, these professionals from the “other real world” of corporate America now are professionals dealing with the “real world” of  higher education and changing peoples’ lives. They do not dare calculate how much money they earn per hour, but they are professionals who love what they do.

Lots of stories. Not every professor is on food stamps, but I've never known a wealthy professor. Of course, I've never been allowed to know ivied professors--wonder if they are rich. Not every professor will take you on an Irish drinking tour of Fall River, either, and that's too bad indeed. 

But they all have stories to tell. 

I’m wondering if there is a need to start a new blog, something along the lines of “Fears, Tears, and Beers: Professors’ Stories” to chronicle these stories. Friend John LaNear and I are planning to do so soon, and will be looking for real stories from real, underpaid, overworked professionals who love what they do and want to share some stories from their “real worlds”.

Stay tuned.

Ode to My Momma

Rough and calloused fingers,

Tobacco stained and strong.

Eyes that hinted of stories

Past and present.

Twinkling eyes that promised

Dirty jokes, joy, and warmth.

My mother was vibrantly alive.

She never told me a dirty joke.

I was her floating tumor,

Or so the doctor had promised,

When late in life she found herself

Accidentally with child.

Her only boy

Was not to be told dirty jokes.

Iced tea was the only vice she practiced.

Except for her Pall Malls, of course.

She stored the others away

For the same reason she never sat down to supper.

She was the giver.

She was the server.

Never the taker.

Never the served.

I was not a good son.

She was a good mother.

Seeing the barriers I erected,

Seeing the barricades I constructed,

Seeing my crossed arms and eyes,

Accepting my behavior without blaming

Herself or me,

She continued to give and love.

She lived to see her floating tumor’s baby boy.

Her first airplane ride, exciting and fun,

Created good stories,

Incidental to holding her son’s son.

My mother passed away 

Too soon afterward.

Cigarette in one hand, phone in the other.

Dirty joke singing in the phone lines.

Organizations, Jobs, and Careers

I was talking to an old man in a bar the other day. He is a retired engineer from a major corporation in this area. He spent his life in the this company and has many fond memories of that life. He now is back in the company as a consultant and wonders what happened to that company he loved so much, as he celebrates the fact that he is no longer an employee there.

This started me wondering, as I prepare to teach two graduate courses this week, both on the topic of how to build effective organizations. What constitutes an effective organization?

The man with whom I spoke talked of the days when the owners of this large company would routinely make the rounds of work stations and talk to employees. The owners knew the names of most of the people and called the folks by name. Many employees had worked for the company all their lives. There seemed to be mutual respect. The company did well.

The company was doing so well that it was sold. The new corporation is managed by young, ambitious business-school-graduates who came with new ideas, most revolving around production metrics and formulated motivation tools. They made no effort to know the people. The working people have jobs to do and are expected to their jobs and continually increase production. Levels of mutual respect have declined. Employees who could have retired. Turnover for the rest increased dramatically.

But the company is doing well.

These two organizations (company before sale/company after sale) point to two different ways of organizing to do business.

In the days of Frederick Taylor, and the concepts of “labor” and “capital”, organizations were designed so as to facilitate smooth running humans-as-replaceable-cogs-in-the-machine called the organization, thus decreasing the “cost of labor” as much as possible.

W. Edwards Deming thought organizations should be designed so as to capitalize the best performance of human beings, defined as thinking, talking-back, important partners in the execution of an organization’s business, through the development and implementation of effective processes.

In Taylor’s idea, individual people were expendable. In Deming’s way of thinking, individual people were important and, rather than being seen as costs,  should be seen as worthy investments.

I wonder that if people are replaceable and appear on the “cost” side of the ledger, companies focus on creating jobs within their organizations. If people are investments, I wonder if companies focus on creating careers within their organizations.

In talking to working people as I wander around the country, I wonder if we (companies and the U.S. in general) have moved away from Deming’s idea and toward Taylor’s in defining what effective work organizations should look like. I wonder what effect this might have on the economic health and vitality of the country.

Professors and Students

There was a time in which societies put teachers on a par with warriors, philosophers and mathematicians. All were highly respected by the societies in which they practiced their arts.

In the society in which I practice my art, only the warriors seem to have survived with their virtue intact. I wonder if this is because, in the case of teachers anyway, at one recent point in our history, persons like me, from outside the walls of ivy were allowed, thanks to GI Bills and the like, to become initiated into this once-sacrosanct ground?

I worry about the future of this business we call higher education. Professors are not viewed as professionals by most people, in the U.S. at least. We are viewed with suspicion as being left-leaning slackers who do not add value to society. Colleges and universities are viewed as providing tickets for employment at best, and as extensions of high school at worst. University and college administrators are grasping at business fads and metrics to try to save their institutions. Entrepreneurs, believing there is money to be made (and there is), are swarming like flies over the weaker of the colleges, buying, revamping, dumbing down when necessary, and focusing on next quarter’s bottom line.

My worries are offset by almost 40 years of experience with students, that entity that defines the industry. I still teach. I have not seen a substantial change in skills levels, motivation, or abilities in my students over these years. When I hear that “they don’t make students like they used to” comments, I smile a bit, cringe a bit, and think of a freshman English class I took in 1963. Dr. Obojski was intent on making us ignorant hillbillies less ignorant, not only about English, but about the world in general. One day he gave a current events quiz. At the next class, he strode into the room, put down his pipe, took out his pocket watch and threw it on the desk (it broke), and yelled at the top of his voice, “Pablo Picasso is not a god-damned tennis player” (professors could smoke and cuss back then when it served to make a point—it did with me since I may very well have been one of the folks who said this on the quiz).

Some students do in fact see their first year in college as grade 13; some did when I started school in 1962. Some students do in fact see undergraduate and graduate education as providing employment tickets; some also did in 1962. What actually happens to the students, after they enter college is the crucial issue, and one upon which professors have the most impact. I reflect with pride on my former students, watching their eyes light up, being present for “aha” experiences, and watching these bright students excel, not only academically, but professionally and personally. Most professors have these same reflections.

If professors behave as though students are cogs in the machine that produce the professors’ paychecks; if we get so caught up in our own stories that we forget why we exist professionally; or if we are depressed because we never became professors at one of those ivied institutions, to the point of ignoring the students we serve, everyone loses.

Most professors don’t. Students are why professors exist. They—the students and professors—provide me with an optimism about the future that offsets my pessimism related to the business of higher education in general, with its social engineers, managers, and bevies of fools.