A life well lived

I’ve written before about the importance of mentoring, but I didn’t name names. After the recent death of Dr. Richard Hill, I feel compelled to identify him as my first professional mentor and explain more specifically about his influence on my life.

I only had the privilege of teaching with Dr. Hill at Riverside High School for 5 years before his retirement, but these were the first years of my teaching career, and he was a foundation for me. Early on in my first year, he and his wife had me over to their house for dinner, along with the student teacher with whom he was working that semester. Although he mentored scores of teachers during his long and productive career, this simple gesture underscored that he valued me as an individual as well as a new colleague and that he was willing to invest his time in me. During that first year, the school was so overcrowded that I didn’t have my own classroom and had to teach in a different room every period, so a job that is always trying for first-year teachers was even more unsettled for me. But Dr. Hill was a source of stability amongst the turmoil. Through formal observations and informal conversations, he made it clear that he believed in me, all the while making certain I understood that my success did not depend on my trying to replicate his teaching style. Admittedly, I would have been hard-pressed to do so, because in addition to his huge intellect, he had a booming voice and a tall stature that could command the attention of a high school classroom in ways that I never could. Plus he had a smile that could envelop a room and diffuse many tense situations. But knowing that a seasoned veteran believed in me gave me strength when things seemed bleak. We definitely shared a love of the intricacies and patterns of history, and he patiently helped me think through the strategies that could work for me as a teacher. As I made my first steps of professional advancement and became chair of the social studies department, he offered his advice from having previously filled that position himself. Not to mention that any time I had concerns about whether or not I was correctly pronouncing a place or name, I knew that I could count on him to set me straight.

Dr. Hill also taught me a lesson that has been formative for life, not just for teaching. He had enjoyed a successful career at another Durham high school before moving to Riverside when it opened. But even with all his experience — or perhaps because of it — he recognized that not every day or every lesson would go as planned. So on the whiteboard in his classroom, one word could always be found written in all capital letters: RESILIENCE. Understanding the need for resilience has been a valuable lesson for all parts of my life.

2001 retirement party at Riverside High School

I know at the time of his retirement many colleagues and former students and parents of students crowded the lobby to wish him a fond farewell. In addition to our love of history, Dr. Hill and I shared a love of music, so I had opportunities to continue our friendship after his retirement when we saw each other at concerts and other social events. I hope in the ensuing years enough people continued echoing the message that his was a life well lived, impacting countless lives around him. Now that we no longer have his grace and wisdom to enrich our lives, the best we can do to honor his legacy is to embrace resiliency and to be willing mentors to those around us.

Daysed and confused

I’ve considered using this hosta as my profile pic.  I love the variegated leaves of this particular variety.  Of course, you can’t see them in this picture because, as usual, the plant had been ravaged by the deer and rabbits that saunter through my back yard and consider my carefully tended foliage to be their candy store.

Yet this plant still managed to produce a beautiful bloom, in spite of all the chaos going on around it.  I’ve always prided myself on my focus and on being unflappable, so when I took this picture in 2018, this plant seemed representative of my personal and professional outlook.

Then 2020 happened.

When the North Carolina Governor declared a state of emergency on March 10 in response to the coronavirus pandemic, I was planning on being out of the office for the next 4 work days on a previously planned vacation.  I’ve lived and worked in North Carolina for 30 years, so I’ve seen my fair share of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and snow and ice storms, but even the worst of these emergencies was at least somewhat resolved within a few weeks.  So before I headed out the door, I grabbed up a few paper files and uploaded to the cloud the digital files for the projects that had deadlines within the next month — feeling confident I would be able to meet all my obligations even if the rapidly evolving conditions of COVID-19 interfered with my ability to report to work as usual.

Here we are 6 months later, and I’m still working from home, with no indication my circumstances are going to change any time soon.  I don’t mean for this to sound disgruntled or despondent, because in the grand scheme of things, I really don’t have anything to complain about.  I’m fully employed, I have the needed equipment to enable me to work from home, and I’m healthy.  And without a daily commute of 50 miles, my gasoline bill and the wear-and-tear on my vehicle and my carbon footprint are actually doing much better.

But faced with the appalling and persistent daily reports of new cases and new deaths from COVID, alongside the nearly constant civil unrest over the past 4 months generated by police brutality and systemic racism and social injustice, and with the additional layer of a contentious election season, I also find it imperative to reflect on my motivations and priorities.

Here are the lessons I’ve learned — so far — during my working from home and almost constant staying at home during the COVID crisis.

• Every office professional needs to have the digital equivalent of a “go bag.”  Putting on my records management hat, I would even argue that planning for off-site access to critical files should be a part of every organization’s disaster plan.  And not just a one-time access to restore files after a disaster but long-term ongoing access as is currently needed by the work from home (WFH) workforce.
• Time has lost all meaning.  Sometimes I feel like spelling days as daze instead.  The best I can do is slot events into the “before days” or “these days.”  But I have a hard time if pressed to make greater distinctions.  I was recently looking for an email related to a project from February, but it took me forever to find it because I was convinced it had occurred at least 18 months ago, so I was searching my email archive.  ESPN columnist Ryan Hockensmith made an interesting analysis a few months ago when he acknowledged that his WFH life lacks “chapter breaks.”  Where things like going to lunch or the daily commute had previously provided gradual changes to the rhythm of our days, the same cannot be accomplished in a WFH environment.  As he said, “Right now, everything feels like one big run-on sentence.”  As someone who was a history major and spent 16 years teaching history, my inability to maintain a clear timeline is disturbing to me.
• Routines are still vital.  Early on during these days, I created a to-do list that could help me fill some of my spare time, and it amuses me to look back on it because it demonstrates how I mistakenly thought this crisis was going to be short-lived.  But I also committed myself to do certain things every day so that I wouldn’t fall into bad habits.  Things like exercising, playing the piano, reading for pleasure, and getting dressed.  These activities aren’t all of equal difficulty or import, but they’ve helped provide some structure to my days.
• I’ve always been a hard worker because that’s how I was raised.  My parents and grandparents shaped me with several notions about the work that I do:
  • The way I conduct myself reflects on my family.
  • I must evaluate my work relative to my abilities rather than comparing myself to what others are doing (or not doing).
  • Any job worth doing is worth doing right.

All of these internal gauges have always caused me to want to exercise as much control as possible over my workplace environment so that I can perform to the best of my abilities.  Needless to say, much has been outside my control during the past 6 months.  Looking to another sports example, as Chris Fowler has been commentating during the U.S. Open, he’s made the point that for athletes who can’t control the weather or the performance of their opponent or the distractions of outside sounds (the traffic sounds are so much louder when there isn’t a crowd in the stadium!), they can always control their own attitude and effort.  That’s very much how I’ve approached work during these days.  I continue setting aggressive deadlines for myself and work hard to meet these goals.  When WFH began, there was much discussion about the importance of supervisors being flexible about work expectations and being understanding in light of the current chaos of our lives.  While I can understand this need, I would also like to point out the need to provide support for those employees such as myself who look to the workplace environment — even though it might be remote — as the one place in life right now that can have some sense of control and normalcy.

I know there’s much more yet to be encountered in and learned from this pandemic situation.  But in the meantime, maybe we can all embrace our inner hosta and keep blooming in the midst of chaos.

 

Transitions

Since I began this blog in 2013, I’ve had a self-imposed goal of posting new content on a weekly basis.  While I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to poke around a lot of topics related to archives and libraries, I’m increasingly realizing that this schedule precludes deeper dives into more substantive issues.  This by no means marks the end of this blog, but it does serve as notice that I’ll be transitioning to a less frequent schedule for posting.

In the meantime, if you find yourself in need of some historical information and insights, check out https://cbaileymat.wordpress.com/.

Ode to Bob Dylan

Although the Nobel Prize ceremonies are still a month off, I want to go ahead and acknowledge the pending award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan.  In my mind, his interest in preserving the traditions of folk music together with the external focus of his lyrics make him worthy of a little attention by archivists.

If you need to brush up on your Dylan biography, a 2010 article in The Atlantic summarized Sean Wilentz’ book Bob Dylan in America.  In 2015, an article for Music.mic identified five Dylan songs that changed the course of history:

1. “Blowin’ in the Wind”
2. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
3. “The Times They Are A-Changin'”
4. “Like a Rolling Stone”
5. “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”

And here’s a list of his top 10 protest songs:

1. “The Times They Are A-Changin'”
2. “Maggie’s Farm”
3. “Chimes of Freedom”
4. “Hurricane”
5. “With God on Our Side”
6. “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
7. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
8. “Oxford Town”
9. “Masters of War”
10. “Blowin’ in the Wind”

Here’s one other, less well-known song — “Gotta Serve Somebody” that’s worth a listen:

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a construction worker working on a home
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome
You might own guns and you might even own tanks
You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say

You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Copyright © 1979 by Special Rider Music

The lyrics to all of the above songs can be found on the official Bob Dylan website.

The place for books

I found this poster in the window of a Blackwell’s bookstore in Oxford.  My attitude was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that my eReader died on the flight across the Atlantic, but I was immediately struck by the simplicity and wisdom of this poster.  While books obviously cannot compete with the technology housed in smartphones, eReaders, and tablets, they still are a great source of comfort and memory for me.  Some of the memories are triggered by things that I have left in my books, such as the bookmark that reminds me of a visit to Powell’s when I was in Portland, or the seat assignment card that reminds me of a trip to China.  Other memories were shaped by my choosing to read certain books at specific times, such as reading Michener’s Hawaii before traveling to a workshop at Pearl Harbor and thereby having a better grasp on the history and culture and language of the island.  I also tend to underline passages that hold great meaning for me; when I later re-read that book, my highlights and notes provide a window into my self that read the volume years before.  I recognize that some of my uses of books could be accomplished by electronic versions, but I know that for me, fingering through my collection of novels produces a sensation that is very different from browsing through the volumes on my eReader.

library at Melk Abbey

William H. Gass wrote an essay for Harper’s Magazine in 1999 that echoes my thoughts.  He explains, “We shall not understand what a book is, and why a book has the value many persons have, and is even less replaceable than a person, if we forget how important to it is its body, the building that has been built to hold its lines of language safely together through many adventures and a long time.  Words on a screen have visual qualities, to be sure, and these darkly limn their shape, but they have no materiality, they are only shadows, and when the light shifts they’ll be gone.  Off the screen they do not exist as words.  They do not wait to be reseen, reread; they only wait to be remade, relit” (November 1999, 46).

Theological Hall at Strahov Monastery

Some high school libraries are completely eschewing books in favor of electronic resources, and most public libraries offer more technology training sessions than they do book group meetings.  While I certainly recognize that libraries cannot afford to remain so enamored with the way things have been done in the past that they overlook the changing needs of their patrons, I for one hope that children for generations to come will have the ability to develop a love for books in all their forms.  Gass talks of frequenting the public library while he was in high school and borrowing “a new world.  That’s what a library does for its patrons.  It extends the self.  It is pure empowerment” (48).  Though hard to codify in a five-year plan, I think this is a goal that all libraries should embrace.

Addendum: For a succinct and moving testimony to the power of libraries, read the story of Malala Yousafzai, the teenager who was shot in the head by the Taliban for championing women’s rights and who spoke at the opening ceremony of the library in Birmingham, England.

As we are coming up on Banned Books Week, it is interesting to consider why books can cause such visceral reactions.  The American Library Association has compiled a list of the reasons various books have been challenged.

Here are some of the books that I have found to be influential:

• The Grapes of Wrath
• Remembrance of Things Past
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• On the Road
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
• From Slavery to Freedom
• Absalom, Absalom
• A Farewell to Arms
• The Optimist’s Daughter

New beginnings

In 2011, I took a leap of faith. Sixteen years into a successful teaching career, I decided to give myself a sabbatical and go back to graduate school for a second master’s degree. I always promised myself that I wouldn’t become a jaded, burned-out remnant of the idealist that put two Duke degrees to work teaching social studies in a public high school. So when I recognized that I had mastered the content knowledge for my job to such an extent that it was no longer intellectually challenging for me, I knew that I needed to broaden my horizons. I always incorporated primary source documents into my teaching as a means of hooking teenagers into learning history. Plus a number of the professional development activities with which I filled my summers as a teacher involved conducting research at archives, and this exposure convinced me it would be intriguing to learn more about the organization and operation of these institutions. So I enrolled in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and determined to pursue a concentration in archives and records management. Having completed my MSLS degree in May 2013, I am beginning this blog as a way to document my discoveries along with my questions. Join me for the rest of the journey!