Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A Funny Thing To Picture Me Doing

The Bridge Cafe connects the library to the Robert Crown Center, where some of Hampshire's athletic-type stuff happens. It was named "the Bridge" because, in the architect's view, it links intellectual pursuits (the mind) with physical ones (the body), which is an odd and funny thing for a cafe to do.

For four years, I swept, buffed and dusted that bridge every morning, five days a week... a sleepy caretaker with a high-powered vacuum and some time to think.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Joe, Who Shared Insights Inspiring and Frightful


He was going to teach his daughter everything... and you could see how much it would mean to him. Mountaineering, bicycle maintenance, philosophy, history and on and on... the curriculum would take decades to get through, and form this stunning succession of moments in time that both of them — father and daughter — would always have to think back fondly on and smile over. Its architecture was sprawling, with branches that spiraled off in all directions.

He spoke with great pride, in sentences that sprung up from some deep paternal place, a prehistoric reserve of fatherly sentiment that every man-creature caring for a child had instinctively drawn from since the beginning of time.

In the company of such powerful forces of nature, I seemed to shrink some... thinking over and over to myself: What curriculum will I offer?

Yikes.