The Last Days of Robertson Also Known as the Two-Fisted, Fighting Poet Doc

Two-Fisted Tales (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First let us unpack the title of this post. "Two-fisted fighting poet doc" is from a Sinclair Lewis novel, though I don't remember which one, and the fact I can so easily look it up means I don't have to look it up. (1)

Right?

But yes these are the last days of my time as a professor in the Department of Media Studies with special responsibilities in the Journalism Minor at the University of San Francisco. "Last days" is figurative language - a metonymy, I think - in which the part stands for the whole. Days stand for months. I do not retire until May.

Edith wants me to blog out this last seven months. Actually, she wanted me to start the first day of this semester - to create a bittersweet arc, recapitulating a 27-year career and ending on a note of sadness, gladness and/or madness, contingent on events. But I couldn't put my heart into it so I delayed. Somewhat too easy to turn this into an excursion through an archipelago of regrets since my time at USF has been sometimes very good and mostly pretty good and only occasionally not so good at all, though the last five years has been a little Eh a little Ugh and somewhat Oh Come On Not Really?

I do not like regretting. Though it is irresistible to regret since implicit in regret is an assumption of importance and agency on one's part. The sea slug does not regret the operas it did not write. On the other hand, I did some good things, mostly in the classroom, and I always enjoyed teaching and never (Edith reminds me) taught a class the same way twice, which means I never served the same metaphorical meal twice. And some metaphorically feasted and others - not so much. But each day was bright, new, fragile.

One occasionally gets kind notes from former students. One sometimes - oh you know - solicits kind notes from former students. Overall I conclude that over these years I did good. Not perfect. I'm sure if I keep at this journal of days I will not be able to resist identifying specific moments of misjudgment and malconduct. And yet and yet to the end - almost there; I can smell it - I enjoyed teaching and cared about it and could not resist throwing out what didn't work (and often what did work) and tweaking assignments and discarding assignments and writing new bits of lecture and bookmarking new websites and hyperlinking to new blog posts and news stories as if I were going to teach ethics and magazine writing and beat reporting again and again forever.

That's what I have always liked about teaching: Someday I'll get it (almost) right.

Footnote 1: Of course, I looked it up. It's from Arrowsmith, and it's wonderful:

Zenith welcomes with high hurraw
A friend in Almus Pickerbaugh,
The two-fisted fightin' poet doc
Who stands for health like Gibraltar's rock.
He's jammed with figgers and facts and fun,
The plucky old, lucky old son--of--a--gun!

Footnote 2: The Google, like Suzanne, takes you down to her place near the river and you can hear the boats go by and you can spend the night forever and you know that she's half-crazy but that's why you want to be there and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China and you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind and you know that you can trust her for she's touched your perfect body with her mind by which I mean I looked for a nice "last days" quote and found this:

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

-  H. L. Mencken