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For nearly as long as there
was a Lincoln-Sudbury
there was a Patty Bowdoin
walking its halls, leading meetings,
organizing sundry functions, down, down, down
to the very finest detail, which meant getting that
napkin folded right.
This teacher did not live our
history.
She is our history.
Arriving at the end of the Pioneer Age, she roamed
this earth with teachers named Rogers and Wentworth,
Mitchell and Kirshner,
Marshall and Martin and Barton,
no dinosaurs these,
and she rocked with Ruliffson,
before tumbling with the rest of us
into the Dark Ages when
famine, drought, pestilence,
back-to basics, declining enrollment,
riffing, and Prop 2 1/2 laid waste to
the land.
O, she saw it all! We who came later
will never teach "so long nor see so much."
Thirty-five years is a
long time, and can be longer still,
depending on how you live it.
Or it can be very short,
just an insanely busy week in which
you pack in too many hospitality
committees, numberless get-well baskets, endless
meetings, as well as
TA presidencies, department chairmanships,
L-S 21 coordinatorships,
on top of 100, 821 classes.
In fact,
thirty-five years
can be just one big long
amazing day, when
a community asks,
and a person keeps saying "Yes" for,
count 'em,
thir-ty-five-years.
June 10, 1999