Notes on May 4

Itinerary:
Arrive Days Inn the night before about 9:00 pm; call daughter, call former roommate Fremont Frank; pick up Helga at the ceramics studio on Summit St., meet Frank at Chipotle for a veggie burrito and a XX. Sit at a table outside in the balmy spring evening air and talk about sore feet, orthotics, Chuck Taylor All-Stars, Rohrschack ink-blots, spontaneous human experience, "Fear and Trembling."

Helga's former roommate Megan met us at the Commons, along with another friend and her dad from Canton. He had been at Boston College in 1970, and after May 4 their semester was declared over, and every class became pass/fail. He was interested in our experience at Northeast Swingstate U. He and Frank and I talked about our other kids (a teacher, an elementary school principal, a writer, an environmental activist, a carpenter, a singer). He knew a lot about an evangelical group called Sojourners and a guy named Jim Wallis, who sounds like a kind of left-leaning answer to the megachurch reactionaries backing the Blackwell juggernaut and circumventing the Constitution in the race for governor.

The bell rang at 11:00 pm, and we all lit our candles, stopped talking, and started walking in a loose procession from the Commons out to front campus, along Main Street, past Music and Speech, and back to the Prentice parking lot, where four permanent memorials mark the spots where four students died. That part is much the same every year, starting at the site of an anti-war rally and ending where Alison Krause, Bill Schroeder, Sandy Scheuer, and Jeff Miller were killed by members of Troop G. Then people pray, place a pebble on the marker, or whatever they choose to do, and go their separate ways.

I woke up in time to pick up Helga and meet Frank at Mike's Place out on route 43 for a great breakfast. She talked about her classes; we talked about how hard it was to understand Kierkegaard at 18, and really, how could anyone but Abraham know what it's like to make the leap of faith and hold the knife on Isaac. We talked about our work and our families. Frank's son has a new job with a local contractor and is moving back to Swingstate from Lakestate; my son is moving back to New York from Arizona to do the summer camp at MoreGardens. Zoe seems to have a clue as she repeats what her advisor says, "It's the leap, not the landing."

On the way out, Frank told me he's retiring from Whirlpool this month after 36 years. He started on the assembly line in Clyde after our freshman year, went to Northwest Swingstate U. on the company's dime, and then into management in the distribution division. They moved him up north to Lakestate to run the division, and a few years later he asked to come back to Swingstate, where his mother, daughter, and grandchildren live. He said he's opening a landscape stone business and calling it Froggy River Existential Enterprises (FREE), then he got on his Harley and headed home.

Helga showed me around the ceramics studio where some of her projects were still cooling in the kiln. It was big fun to walk around on her turf among the tools and materials of her craft and see some of the pieces she had made, one of which is now in our living room, a birthday present for Gven. Then she had places to go and things to do, so I walked until I found a wooded place between the library and the track to practice.

As I finished my qigong form, a swarm of preschoolers and their teachers came up the path, sat down, and ate their lunch. It was noon, so I walked over the hill to the Commons, sat and listened to the memorial service for an hour or so, walked to the car and went home the long way, by way of Medina, Mansfield, Mount Gilead, and Delaware. I got to Ted's place with just enough time to shovel a truckload of horse manure and unload it at home before my Thursday night class, so it worked out well.