Tonight we had a little party for Lee Mazmanian, a USF colleague who retired last December. Many things made her special, but the one burned into my psychic hide -- a kind of tattoo only to be revealed to my nearest and dearest and now to you to whom I am the farthest and weirdest (well there you go) -- was that she was a member of the committee that hired me 18 years ago.
Two of the other five members were here tonight. (One was invited but is in Reno watching the air races.) They changed my life. They persisted in the face of opposition from an associate dean who branded me a "card-carrying journalist," not a genuine academic.
Perhaps they did it to spite the associate dean. That is a question I choose not to ask. Because here I am where I longed to be.
We actually had a jeroboam of champagne tonight, one of those double-sized bottles that show you are committed to celebration.
To comrade Mazmanian. Bubbles up.
Two roads diverged blah blah blah. Someone invited me down one of them, eased my way and secured my passage, and that has made all the difference.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment