by Ted Bernard
She shifts forward in her chair, leaning over the desk, and studies a page of her notebook.
“First, why no website?”
“Actually, no grand design or lack of it. I just haven’t got around to it. Teaching two classes, attending too many meetings, and trying to think and write all seem more important than self-promotion.”
“I get that. No clocks, no website.”
“I do have a computer.” I point to my battered laptop with the Kenyan flag. She utters nothing more than “I see”.
“Tell me about your upbringing. Where did you grow up? Go to school? What interested you as a kid? Early life stuff.”
“I grew up in Maine, a small town called South Bow. Ever heard of it?”
“Can’t say as I have. But the one summer I spent in Maine changed my life.”
“Changed your life. What were you doing in Maine?”
“I was a counselor-in-training at a camp near Eastport. I was fourteen. It was my first time away from home. There were international kids there doing the same thing — a couple of Brits, one girl from France, another from Israel, several Canadians from across the border in New Brunswick. They really opened my eyes to a world beyond my provincial upbringing. One of those kids was an Italian guy. He was sixteen and seemed so sophisticated. He got me interested in Italian. I learned some words, a bit of slang and street talk, how to flirt. After that summer of puppy love, I promised myself I would try to learn how to speak Italian like a native.”
“Did you ever follow through?” I force myself to ignore the puppy love bit.
“Si!” She beams a smile gaining like dawn. “I took four years of Italian at Virginia and spent a semester in Florence. After graduation, I went back to Florence and worked there. Talk about immersion! Can you imagine trying to keep up in an office of smart native speakers who were perpetually trading barbs, mostly with sexual undercurrents?”
“I cannot. That’s an incredible accomplishment. Is there a way you could put your Italian to use here?”
“Maybe. Um, so … South Bow. Tell me about your days there, going to school, academic interests, what you did in high school, where you went to college.”
“South Bow is a crossroads about 20 miles from Gardner in southern Maine. Population 828, last I looked. No supermarkets or other big boxes, still a few mom and pop businesses, no stop lights. A friendly place where folks know each other, sometimes too well. Through childhood and my teens, I spent lots of time in the woods, fishing off the coast, hanging out at the beaches in summer.” I pause as my mind tracks back to those days of innocence.
Katherine waits patiently. She seems to comprehend my reverie.
I come back. “I was an okay student in elementary and middle schools, then became a drifter at the periphery of high school activity. Okay, with better than average grades. Not a national merit kind of kid, though never labeled a loser. My parents wanted me to be more engaged but I wasn’t into sports, student council, stuff like that. Sports teams there were called the Moose. How’s that?”
“Not exactly a nimble critter.”
“My kind of critter. My interest was not in the Moose, at least not the ones on the gridiron. I liked bird watching, tracking animals, climbing mountains and hiking, skating and skiing in winter, fishing in summer. I did well enough to get into Southeastern Maine University. Majored in anthropology with a minor in field ecology.”
“Do you speak a foreign language?”
“As you already know, some Latvian, my parents' native tongue, and Swahili. I did research in East Africa. Got to use it daily, mainly to ask where to find the local duka — the little shops in every village, where they sold Tuskers. Most of the interviews in my project were done in the vernacular, Kikinyati . I needed interpreters to help with that.”
“Tuskers?”
“Kenya beer.”
“Ahh. Say, I’ve been wondering about your surname. Does it mean ‘free man’ in German or something?”
“Yes, it is Germanic, same derivative as people with the last name, Freyman. It may mean ‘man from the place called Frie or Frey’. But I like being thought of as a ‘free man’.” As usual, I expected this would get a rise.
“Ah ha, a happily single dude,” she ventures.
“So far.”
She straightens up, puts on a resolute face. “Let’s go on to your grad work. Did you go right on to grad school after South … what was it?”
“Southeastern Maine University. Yes, I got into an environmental studies program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and somehow persisted there to the PhD.”
“How long?”
“Seven years.”
“Aarg! I don’t think I could do that. I’ve heard that tenacity is more important than smarts in doctoral programs. Is that so?”
“It’s partly true, especially for those like me who aren’t geniuses. I’m a patient person who likes to take his time getting a grasp on things. Also, I was overseas almost two years in Kenya. When I got back to Madison, I was lucky enough to land a fellowship to write my dissertation and get out some publications. I was in no hurry. But that was almost a decade ago. Nowadays, they give you only three or four years of support. People are rushed through their degrees.”
“It still sounds like a long pull.”
“From what I know about you, Katherine, you’d be fine. You’re ambitious and capable. You could be one of those high achievers rather than a turtle like me.”
“A turtle! That’s the last animal I would choose as your totem. But for me, even if I were to have the ambition, I can’t imagine another five years of stress. And I think I’m too old. Gosh, I’d be trending toward middle age by the time I finished.”
“Sorry Katherine, that’s absurd. How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight. And you?”
“Going on thirty-three. See, if you stayed with it, you’d only be a bit older than I am now. I don’t think of myself as anywhere near middle age and people don’t hit their prime creativity until the early forties.”
“Yeah, maybe. Let’s see, back to you. Umm, what do you think of Gilligan? Living in Argolis? Social life here?”
“I can answer those questions but don’t you want to know about my dissertation, my teaching, what I’m writing, what I read? You’ll get an F on Manny’s assignment.”
“Yes, of course. Still a bit sleepy, I guess. Manny?”
“Between us, that’s what the old guys in the school call your prof, Patricia Mansfield. Behind her back, of course. She and Sophie Knowles, who is ‘Soapy’ to them, and Marilyn Shesky, who they call ‘Pesky’, are the only women among twenty-plus faculty. That number tells you something about this school. The women joke among themselves about their nicknames but they surely feel the sexism and derisiveness. I don’t blame them.”
“Wait a minute, you called my prof ‘Manny’ and the senior faculty ‘old guys’? Aren’t we being a little hypocritical here?”
“Yeah, we are, or more accurately I am.” I feel increasingly drawn to the pluck of this woman. Compared to others of my grad students, she seems comfortable in her own skin, confident of her intellect. Many of the others seem so mainstream Ohio obedient, even phlegmatic.
“Sorry, that was discourteous. When I arrived, I introduced myself to two of those senior faculty, who shall go unnamed. They were climbing the stairs, both in plaid Bermuda shorts. Their knobby-kneed legs made them look like chickens. They were probably on their way to write arcane papers for journals nobody ever heard of. Since then they haven’t made the least bit of effort to interact with me. But not all the senior faculty are like that. I’ve got a nice friendship going with Burt Zielinski, the climatologist. He couldn’t have been more welcoming. Ah, sorry! None of this is helping you gather information for your paper. And, if you would erase all this gossip, I’d be very pleased.”
I rise and stretch toward the ceiling, breathing a sigh that reverberates around the office. Katherine looks up, wondering about the ab
rupt break. She draws in a deep breath, seems to be swooning.
“You okay?”
“Yes, yes. Just a little overtired.”
“Say, do you think we could continue at The Eclipse?” I ask. “I’m sorely in need of a second cup of coffee.”
“That would be lovely. Let me gather my things.”
We descend the dimly lit stairway, passing undergraduates rushing upward to class. We break out into the bright morning, the maples ablaze as crackling fires. Across the street, we elbow our way into The Eclipse Coffee Company, a chintzy converted house with 1980s fixtures and vinyl covered booths. The Eclipse is favored by science and engineering geeks on Southwell Quad, especially international students, who this morning fill the place and hold forth in many tongues. With two steaming mugs in hand, I point toward the patio. She follows, a bounce back in her step. We choose a sunny table.
Sitting in the sunshine, filtered by a honey locust, on an autumn day of perfection, sipping strong coffee, exotic languages just a table away, Katherine is silent, perhaps, like me, willing the moment to infinity. I sip my coffee, basking in the sunshine and her company. I look her way and pull a roguish smile.
She blinks. “Oh yeah, the interview.” She turns on the recorder. “Okay, let’s do the academic questions. Tell me about your dissertation research and what’s come of it?”
I tell her about becoming fascinated with Africa, taking African Studies courses, and learning enough Swahili to function in Kenya. I describe the influence of Kate Nickleby, an ecologist with a strong interest in cultural ecology. I explain that she was my advisor and dissertation supervisor but also my mentor and friend, the one who introduced me to complex adaptive systems theory and panarchy.
Katherine interrupts. “So, our text is your mentor’s book? And she was called Kate?”
With that she pries my heart open. “Yes and yes, the very one.” I’m sure she senses the abrupt turn in my mood.
She nods. She looks across at me, gathering in my troubled expression, but she says nothing about it.
I continue, saying that Kate and I had published several papers. I tell her of the morning Kate was found dead on her office floor, and of how hard it was to return to my writing. I admit that I cannot stop thinking about this woman and her calculated risk. I confess that I will always cherish Kate’s wisdom and kindness.
“It must be so difficult to call up those memories.”
“Eyup, course ‘tis,” I reply, my Down East accent surfacing. “But if I stop telling Kate’s story, I fear I may lose her. You understand, perhaps.”
She wraps her index finger around her chin and nods. “I do.” That she was so palpably suffused with the sensibility of loss, summons once again my own unrelenting sorrow. She smiles a sad knowing smile, a smile that seems to convey a grasp of tragedy in the midst of living life amply and of redemption in revealing life’s inexplicably painful twists. She almost whispers. “One of my favorite poets, the Palestinian American, Naomi Shihab Nye, wrote that ‘kindness and sorrow are the only ways to know the full size of life’. I live by her words.”
“Beautiful lines, those.”
Back to the interview, she asks about my philosophy of teaching.
“Based on a few weeks in my class, what would you say about my teaching? You can be honest.”
She ponders the question a moment. “I see structure in the way you’ve laid out the semester for us. I also see flexibility depending on where discussion takes us, day to day. I think you have tough standards and are committed to having us really learn what you’re teaching. I think I speak for my classmates here.” She pauses. “These standards are challenging for us, Stefan. We work twice as hard in your class as in the others combined. Though we moan about papers that bleed red, I think one day we might be thankful for your high standards. Finally, well not finally, but for now, I find your ways of teasing out information and stories from us intriguing and somewhat mystifying. It’s like you’re liberating our imaginations. I’m not sure how you pull that off, but it sure leads to good chemistry. Finally, really finally, I think you sometimes see us more clearly than we see ourselves. That is truly spooky.”
“Yeah, I do try to see each of you as interesting and important people and so you are my teachers.”
“Funny how that works.”
“One of humanity’s most virtuous cycles, for sure. Most of what you just said accords with what little I’ve thought about a so-called philosophy of teaching. The term is somehow repugnant to me. Teaching is primordial human behavior — from mothers and grandmas to the guy who taught me how to fish, coaches, even cellmates in prison: none of these has a philosophy of education but each may be offering important lessons. Everybody’s a teacher at some point. Good teaching is just being hospitable toward somebody who wants to learn. That’s how I see it. In the end both parties benefit, the teacher often more so than the learner.”
“Who taught you how to fish?”
How curious that she let the bit about teaching as a prosaic act collect dust.
“My father.”
“Okay,” she says abruptly. “I think I’ve got plenty to work with here.” She put away the recorder. Heat radiated off her face as she embraced the crisp morning in this classically beautiful and captivating university. “I love it here,” she says.
2
Enough for a Saturday morning! I cannot bear to read one more undergraduate essay. Great gods of grammar and style, whatever happened to high school English? I change into running togs and huff through fifty push-ups. From the drinking fountain in the hallway, I fill my water bottle, insert it into my runner’s pack, lope down the stairs two at a time, and head east. In less than a mile I cruise onto a rail-to-trail path along the Shawnee River. Unexpectedly, off to the left, I see hundreds of people wandering among dozens of open-air stalls beneath an array of multi-colored umbrellas and canopies. An acoustic trio with a guitarist, a bassist, and a banjo player fills the air with folk tunes. A woman and man in clown costumes dance. Children skitter from booth to booth. Laughing groups of international students mill about.
This joyful market scene matches my mood so perfectly that I decide to explore the offerings: the stalls of organic vegetables, potatoes, squashes and pumpkins, sunflowers and mums, apples and pears, pawpaws, baked goods, meats and cheeses, locally prepared salsas, spices, relishes, granola, honey, and maple syrup. Not since Kenya had I encountered the happy union of farmers and villagers at a weekly market. I come upon a guy overseeing “Peace River Peppers”. On a long table, he has spread a colorful array of sweet and hot peppers and jars of preserved pepper jams, salsas, and relishes. He’s an elfin, late middle-aged man, brown bearded with streaks of gray, dressed in a faded ochre t-shirt with the message, “Patience? Shit!”. He smells of Patchouli oil, musty leather, perspiration, and animal manure mixed with the smoky essence of ganja .
“Lovely looking peppers. Is this your mainstay?” I ask, lamely.
“Ah no, I’ve got a diversified, all-purpose little vegetable farm with goats and chickens. Some horses: Percherons, Morgans, a nag or two. Sustains me and the little woman who sleeps next to me. She’s the one who claimed back about 30 years ago, ‘If I can grab hold of yer pecker, yer heart will surely follow’.” He laughs boisterously.
“Are you a regular vendor here?”
“Well, not exactly. I only come to town in late summer when the peppers and the neo-hippy chicks are ripe n’ pretty and I can trade some weed. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Peter Pecker packed a pipe of potent paca loco.”
“Weed? Isn’t it illegal in Ohio?”
“Wahl, shure. But county sheriffs look t’other way thanks to payoffs from certain growers. Aw, they hire a ‘healiocopter’ for a week every August to rattle those who make our living from the sacred herb. Mostly for show, they bust a couple of growers each season, the ones who refuse to pay tribute. Then they forget about the rest of us.” He removes his UFW cap to scratch a disheveled mop. �
��Say, are you in the market for some Grieg County Gold?”
“Not at the moment, thanks. The last time I smoked, I got seriously dizzy and barfed all over my date.”
“Well, podner, you know where to find me. I’ll be here until about November fifteenth.” He held out his beefy hand. “Rutherford Bosworth Hays. People call me ‘Boss’.”
“Pleased to meet you, Boss. I’m Stefan Friemanis, here for a couple of years to teach environmental studies at GUO.”
“Well, Stefan, you and I may need to talk. I got a lot of environmental concerns, shall we say?”
“I’d like that! But now I’m off on a run to Great Gable State Park.”
“Good luck to you. Exercise is good for the body and soul. Me, I regularly exercise my right wrist here, snapping off the tops of cans o’ Bud. Then I go to a neck workout, tipping that golden liquid down ol’ Boss’ gullet.”
“That’s one serious workout.”
As I walk away from Boss, I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder. I turn to see Katherine Bridgeston smiling brightly with a “Hello stranger!” accompanied by a girlish fluttering of her left hand. Her fathoms-deep caramel eyes appear to crave something I naively hope is more than a brief hello. “My god, Katherine, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you!”
“Yeah, Thursday seems ages ago.” She laughs bashfully.
An irresistible urge, verboten though it might be, bubbles up. I want to invite Katherine to hang out with me today. She looks vibrant in her loose-fitting Gilligan sweatshirt, raggedy jeans, scuffed Converse sneakers. “Getting a week’s worth of veggies and fruits?” I ask. If this isn’t the worst pick-up line I’ve ever uttered, it must be close.
“That I am. And you?”
I explain that this is my first time at the market, that I’d just begun a ten-mile run and couldn’t resist stopping. “It’s seems like a Norman Rockwell scene.”
“Norman who?”
“Ah, I guess you’re a bit too young to know about him. I’ll tell you about Norman another time.”
“Okaaaay. So, are you an accomplished road runner? A marathoner, maybe?”