[15 years ago this week, I started this here public scholarly blog. There have been lots of twists and turns since, and the best ones have been aided & abetted by wonderful folks. So for my 15th (!) anniversary series, I wanted to pay tribute to a handful of those moments and people, leading up to this special weekend tribute to my first and best reader!]
Just over
nine months ago, we lost
my Dad. I’ve had the chance to pay
tribute to him in a number of different ways this year, as of course I’ve
done on
this blog many times (but never sufficient to express all that he
meant to me). Speaking of this blog, I don’t know that I can put it any more
clearly than this: very soon after I started it he figured out how to become a follower,
meaning that he would get each day’s post by email; in our daily email
exchanges he would respond to my posts a very significant percentage of the
time; and to this day, quite literally to the moment that I’m drafting this
post, I still think of him as my first and favorite reader for anything and
everything I write here. I still can’t quite believe that I’ll never get to
read his thoughts on a blog post again (I don’t imagine that will ever entirely
sink in, and I’m okay with that), but I promise you that for as long as I write
here, and as long as I write and work and teach and parent and love and live,
he will be a defining presence. I miss you and love you, Dad.
Veterans
Day series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. Please
feel free to say hi and share any blog responses or ideas in comments!
as it happens, I was this morning planning a trip to Charlottesville in December to give a lecture, and I decided to look up your father to see if we can meet so I could reconnect and thank him for his kindness. when I was an undergraduate at a time when I was struggling, he offered to do an independent study on American literature. Every Wednesday morning, the following semester, I came to your porch and we discussed that week's assigned novel. it was by far the highlight of my academic life, and one that has stayed with me for many decades. I was very sad to find your father has passed, and astonished to find that he was only 10 years older than I was at the time! I revered him, and as I’m sure many other people have told you the process of reading with him was one of self discovery. I’m also deeply sorry that I didn’t get a chance to thank him for the time he gave me, because I didn’t appreciate when I was a (somewhat fallow) student how precious that time is. I salute him – even though we kept up very sporadically, he had a profound impact on my intellectual development and my life and career, which I guess is exactly what any Teacher hopes for.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for this beautiful comment, Trigg (which I hadn't seen until now, sorry!). It really means a lot, and I will pass these kind words along to my Mom as well.
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