bag

One Mexican striped nylon bag, hanging on the closet door on our landing, and catching the afternoon sunlight.  Or - think of it another way: "in the bag."  Today was my last department meeting as Chair - and although I have another 96 days to go until my contractual days are up - and who knows what they might bring - I sincerely hope that that is the last time that I'll formally have to juggle timekeeping, fairness, patience, tact, and a whole lot of suppressed thoughts and words.  I've been in a full time/tenured position for - ouch - forty one years, now, and eleven and a half of those years have been spent chairing departments (at Oxford, Rutgers, and USC).  That's over a quarter of my time - and for someone who truly enjoys teaching and writing more than chairing, that's rather too hefty a percentage, methinks.  Time to hang up my ... what?  I don't have a gavel.  Time to bin Roberts' Rules of Order?  - though I left my copy at Rutgers, to be honest, never thinking I'd be chairing again - insert, here, a hollow laugh... 

I'll give my father, via Zoom the other day, the last word: 

RF.  "You're chair of what, exactly?"  

KF.  "Art History."

RF.  "Oh. I see.  Each one to his own, I suppose."