Category: SSW

Not All Families Are Dysfunctional, Right?

February 15, 2024

As the world continues to spiral out of control, I find myself leaning on my friends. Some friends, though, I fear, are part of the problem. I’m thinking of the MSNBC crowd, who have become my companions in the wormhole. I can hear Glenn Kirschner’s voice, “Friends, I know it’s been long coming, but accountability in on its way.” He’s a comforting dad, a wise advisor, a trusted friend. He, like many in the MSNBC stable, dissolves the barrier between lofty expert and fellow sufferer. It’s remarkably humanizing; but it’s seductive and addictive too. How could we not be drawn in, and obsessively?

Andrew Weissmann is another who brings a dose of humanity to the cold and troubled world of law and politics and ultimate threats. His podcast, Prosecuting Donald Trump, with Mary McCord, is an unusual synthesis of legal reasoning and … giggling. The two hosts are comfortable talking through the maneuvers and principles and case history and possibilities—so much so that they have no fear letting their guard down in their podcast, showing at times their ignorance or personal quirks—and always their warm friendship and gentle teasing. The silliness is never that silly; it’s homey; it’s what it might feel like to have such experts living with you, sitting at your kitchen table, just being in the moment, along with all the momentous decisions and events they are committed to explain as best they can. I commend Andrew for his ability to turn on and off his professional expertise mode. I shouldn’t say “turn off,” since it’s never off; it’s just that he adds his personality and humanity in the podcast in ways we never really see when he’s on camera, where he’s pretty much all business. The subtext here is a kind of statement on how to manage all the baggage, the fallout, the potential despair of the topics being dissected. There’s logical principle, yes, but there’s also some larger, kinder, softer context. The two sides aren’t at odds. The full human being can be both analytical/world beating and humble/relaxed—and sweet with a friend sitting alongside you, even if she is in another state. 

The tone of so many of the MSNBC hosts promotes this humane integration.

And so, what chance do I stand in not becoming too dependent on them? I think my first plunge into this milieu was motivated out of a desire to check something off—to get finished with this Trump business so that I could get on with my life. I find I have often approached life’s problems with a “just get this thing done,” or checklist, approach, as though progress were possible, if only, if only. What I needed to realize then, and now, is that what is needed is an “acceptance of the process” as the default state. It’s an illusion that we can ever get beyond [fill in the blank]. What is needed is the right processing of things.

Journalists have always gotten this. Part of their business is to keep the “news” new—and continuing. There are no endpoints. All that matters is the production and consumption of the stories. The pressures of these realities lead to conditions of sensationalizing and controversy-mongering that are all too well known by anyone in a literate, modern society. In the context of my current condition, I have come to rely on MSNBC folk to be my family. We’re never done with family; we don’t check them off. We just plan to be with them through the years.

In the throes of these dynamics, I sometimes glimpse a version of things where a good balance is found among (1) finished, checked-off outcomes; (2) humanizing “being with” the experts; (3) other things—all mixed together in the right proportions to round off a fully human engagement.

Finding this proper balance has always been a need or an endeavor to be embraced—whatever the world conditions and whatever one’s politics. However, the current state of communication (in general) and social media (in particular), in a hyper-connected, hyper-technologized, hyper-threatened world has made our present moment unlike any in history. Add the destabilizations of Covid, with all its isolations. Add further—perhaps most of all—the growing pains associated with the unearthing of bigotries that for so many years in a pre-technologized world were allowed to fester unseen, unknown. 

The upshot: Psychological survival seems to demand that we retreat to our respective echo chambers, our “families,” just for the purpose of maintaining basic mental health.

Literature, philosophy, linguistics, and rhetorical theory—the stuff of my classes—should offer touchstones and foundations and routines on which to recover some stability. And while I feel empowered by the massiveness of uncertainty and method and humility (and appreciation) fostered by humanistic studies, I look on with sadness as the time for higher education seems to be receding. The reification of the university—like the reification of the fourth estate, or the reification of “democracy”—is dissolving before my very eyes, at Saint Xavier University, yes, but throughout our society, in its shorthand approaches to “information,” if not knowledge.

Maybe the term “growing pains” provides some hope? We’re always on the way to somewhere else, someplace that, if not an endpoint, might at least be a kind of benchmark or banked competence for “leveling up,” to borrow a concept from gaming culture. Even though we’re ever processing, surely some changes have registered. Maybe nothing so grand as an “arc of history bending towards justice.” But who can deny the improvements that the centuries have brought in regards to education and democracy and the good life? My family today is much larger than it ever could have been—even at earlier points in my own lifetime. Thank you, YouTube and MSNBC app and Xfinity. 

I have always been optimistic that the changes being wrought, especially by technology, portend more benefit than threat. But the pains of growing towards that benefit, not to mention the existential threats of a world on fire, have tempered that optimism. If only we can survive…. Survival-—be it for today, the 2024 election, the tipping point—is more than a “check-off” outcome on my list, right?

Thank You, Appellate Court

February 7, 2024

I am loathe to praise Donald Trump. I am so opposed to him and what he represents—perhaps just as opposed as his fiercest critics. That’s saying a lot, for the critics are so numerous, so talented, so diverse, so incisive, so funny—and on it goes. One boon (and potential curse) of technology and social media is the great availability of the analysis, cogitations, skits, declamations, and so on of like-minded people on just about any topic. Donald Trump has his critics and deriders, and I’ve marveled at just how thorough they can all be and in such creative and comprehensive ways.

Trump has also had his supporters, obviously, and it’s that group that compels so many of us to devote so much attention and energy to thinking/opining/worrying about him and his influence.

The praise concerns the way Trump has perfected a method, or rather the way he has been unflinching in the application of that method.

Some time ago, when Ron DeSantis was still a contender and mattered, John Oliver commented on Donald Trump’s designation of DeSantis as “Meatball Ron.” Oliver made a concession about Trump, commenting, with a smirk, “he’s still got it.” Oliver’s appreciative nod, right there alongside the biting satire before and after, got the balance of things right. As we deal with the insanity of a phenomenon like Trump, it’s best not to yell loudly all the time, but to give the devil his due, when earned. Smiling at Trump is an unpleasant prospect; but naming and acknowledging how Trump’s charisma and methods work provides a partial safeguard against him. Laughing at him needs to be done carefully—not only in the sense that his danger should never be dismissed as laughable, but also because meanness and attacking as gratifications in the wake of Trump provide only so much comfort, and that at the risk of some of our dignity, or at least our efforts to elevate our ways at improving things.

As of February 6, when the DC Appellate Court pronounced that Trump does not have unbounded presidential immunity, the tide, long in the making of turning, seems to have decisively turned against Trump. It’s now a matter of time. For so long the great defenders of democracy and justice, the great lawyers and commentators, like Glenn Kirschner, Meidas Touch folk, Andrew Weissmann, and others of the cable news/internet, have been promising, directly and indirectly, that the time was coming. That accountability, so long denied, was on its way. Until yesterday, no one could be certain.

That’s part of the whole insanity of the debacle of Trump—the calling into question all norms, all protections of civil society and the legal profession. But yesterday, after a delay too many of us felt was worrisome and extreme (despite the characterization of one month as “light speed” by those who have experience in appellate court timelines), the court ruled in a way to place some ground, terra firma, beneath our feet once again. Here was a circumstance where a specific response was called for, was needed—and here was a response where all the criteria were met, with elegance and power. And the world (or the part of it with its proper dose of TDS) sighed. We looked on in marvel as propriety, civility, adulthood, calm, and reasonableness were all on display in just the measure needed.

So why should Trump be praised? Part of me feels that, with the immunity question resolved (or on the fast track to resolution), the inevitability of accountability has been scripted; there are various possible drafts, but they all produce the same result. The word inexorable must be used once again. Trump had succeeded in calling into question the concept of inexorability. That was his genius. But he has met his match in some fine professionals in the court system.

What is Trump’s method? It’s more than shamelessness, though that’s a necessary condition. Trump’s method of assertiveness, of never backing down, of being the “perfect bully,” was—and remains—so flawless. It’s his devotion to his method, perhaps, that is so unprecedented. He has taken an idea and has shown us what it looks like to instantiate that idea without alloy or mitigation. Since 2015, I always thought a pivot was coming. To normal people, a strategy works and works and works—until it shows signs of breaking down and not working in the future. At such moments, lesser people will pivot. Trump has shown us what a powerful method looks like without the pivot. 

Never before has such an experiment been on display to so many, all connected, immersed in conversation and commentary. We looked on and wondered: Why would he so endanger himself when he could easily protect himself? The psychologists (most notably, his niece), and conscientious insiders like Barbara Res, give us the needed insight here—but that insight here is not my main concern. Trump has shown us things, almost as a public service.

In nearly breaking the country, he has shown us just how dangerous it is to take for granted things like democracy, the legal system, and the social contract built on conventions of decency. 

But also, in losing, he has helped us affirm some verities: the system basically worked—even on January 6 and all that followed and went before.

For so many months, I considered Trump a fool and a clown that … how could he be dangerous? He puts himself on display, like, all the time. He can’t be taken seriously, and we’ll all be returned to our normal way of behaving once he’s off the scene. So it would go, I thought. But then, after he lost the election, he kinda was off the scene, and began mildly fading—until the indictments started coming in. Like a switch that had been flicked, the insanity of support exploded and has been settling in ever since. True, many commented that it wasn’t deep or considered support, but it was pervasive and growing. And Trump’s method went in the only direction he knows—more assertiveness, more never backing down, more defiance of facts, more gas lighting, more projection, and on it went.

Since 2020, all Trump needed for succeeding in every major design of his was perhaps one more cog—Mike Pence not standing up—or any of the others—Randy Bowers, Brad Raffensberg, William Barr, and so on—and it might have all been different. Or yesterday, the appellate courts could have phoned it in, and on the wrong side of the argument. It’s not hard to imagine, with the alteration of just one or a few pieces, a completely different outcome rather than the one which now points so clearly to accountability.

And it’s because of the closeness of the outcome, the fragility of it all, that I praise Donald Trump. It’s for his uncanny ability to succeed in ways no other person could. He shows us what’s possible, so he’s, yes, a cautionary tale, but he’s also reminder of the awesomeness of human potential. He really could have won. He shows us the power, the horrible efficacy, of a strong man. Oddly, that power affirms the value of human life. One individual can matter. One leader can completely remake a great nation, a great tradition. As horrible as that possibility is, especially as most of us would use the word “destroy” instead of “remake,” it does bring with it an affirmation of human agency. We matter. 

So, Donald Trump is a great man. He’s also a loser, an ignoramus, and a creep. In the end, he shows us what we are capable of—just how close we can come to the edge of the abyss, and just how resilient our institutions can be in pulling us back from peril. Thank you, Appellate Court—for doing your job, with decency and thoroughness, at a time when those attributes were never in greater need.

Alumni Appeal to Save SXU’s English Programs

[This letter was written as a plea to former students to solicit support for retaining the English and English Secondary Education majors at SXU.]

Dear Alum:
 
I hope this letter finds you well. I apologize for reaching out only in a time of need, and I hope you might indulge me by reading my plea to you. I am posting this blog as part of an outreach effort to my past students—so if you know of any friends who attended SXU with you, could you please forward this blog to them?
 
I am asking for help in saving the English and English Education Programs at SXU. The current leaders in administration have a different vision for the university than those of us who have built our English and humanities programs—specifically, the program you took when you were a student here. 
 
English, and by extension, English Education, are two of many liberal arts programs that are on the chopping block as the university seeks to restructure itself. Those of us who teach in the programs believe the thinking that has led to this decision is flawed—on many levels. First of all, we feel the quality of our programs makes a strong recommendation for their continuance. On a more pragmatic level, we feel we have had and currently do have enough students across our programs to make them viable. And even more pragmatically, we feel that the urgent societal need for teachers puts us in a position to grow and provide a strong formation for the next generation of English teachers throughout Illinois (and elsewhere). On a less pragmatic level, we believe that some of the traditional values of higher education—an immersion in the humanities, the cultivation of critical thinking, the study and pursuit of “the good life,” are still relevant to society and individuals alike as we face an increasingly uncertain future, one that needs a clearer discernment and appreciation of priorities.

[NOTE: the University is proposing to retain a form of English Education by moving the program over to the Department of Education, but without the English major, the content of the Secondary Education Program will likely be gutted, as the Education department lacks the faculty and resources needed to cover the range of material that our full major has contained.]
 
We feel that our society needs people who are educated in literature, language, writing, and culture, and that the work we do has value—for our students themselves, for the professions they work in, for their communities—and, for those who have become teachers, for all the students they—you—teach. I’m incredulous that I need to be making this argument. 
 
But at SXU, administrators are looking at national trends in higher education, and a few powerful people have jumped full force into a view of higher ed that is much more career and skill oriented—not to mention limited in options—than has been true in the past. These trends extend beyond SXU, and the movement away from a traditional liberal arts program is being propelled by many societal factors—including the impact of the Internet/social media; critiques of the expense of higher education; new perspectives on the value of a college degree; changing workplaces as a result of the pandemic; and more.
 
I hope you had a positive experience as an English or English Education major at SXU. I hope, in the intervening time between your studies here and your current situation, you have had moments of reflection, where a book you read, a paper you wrote, a discussion—in or out of class—prompted some intrigue and growth in your mind. I hope you can summon up the good will to remember the best intentions of your professors in providing formative experiences that stretched you, and helped you think and feel in challenging and supportive and innovative ways.
 
So here is my plea: Would you be willing to jot down a few words of support—something we can use to help our administrators see that they are being far too extreme in contemplating the elimination of liberal arts majors in English, Spanish, sociology, math, philosophy, and religious studies (for starters)? Please say yes, and, if you feel comfortable doing so, please share your testimonial (it doesn’t have to be long!) by simply posting a comment below in response to this blog entry. If you prefer to send a private message, you can email any of the professors still teaching in the program. I’ve included their names with links to their email addresses below. I also have links to SXU’s administration and Board of Trustees (who will possibly decide on program elimination as soon as its June meeting in a few weeks), and to our founders, the Sisters of Mercy.
 
I have had a blessed career at SXU as a professor, and my heart is breaking, frankly, when I see the changes we are experiencing—the loss of colleagues, the diminishing support for students, the disinvestment in programs to such an extent whereby the move to close them down completely is just a small sideways step after a long process of being worn down.
 
Ever the optimist, I hope for a better day, one brought on through action and persuasion—through good use of language and good stories. We have those things, and so, please do what you can, if you feel so motivated, to help us persist and continue our work.
 
And if you wish to contact me to just chat, please do that too!
 
Wishing you well–Angelo
 
Current English Faculty of the Department of Language ad Literature
• Angelo Bonadonna
• Norman Boyer
• John Gutowski
• Aisha Karim
• Mary Beth Tegan

SXU Administration
• SXU Board of Trustees
• SXU Provost, Saib Othman

SXU Founders
• Sisters of Mercy of the Americas
• Conference for Mercy Higher Education (Julia Cavalo, Executive Director)

The Fixations of February 2

February 2, 2023

Was it Bill P. who said that every important life lesson could be taught from The Godfather? Bill, now long retired, is still with us, still sharp as a tack. I’m thinking of Bill as I picture the convalescent Don Corleone, rehearsing over and over again the details of the operation ahead of them—or was it the Barzini matter? Obsessively, Don Corleone would repeat the steps, with self-awareness of his preoccupation. He was talking to Michael, who had matters in hand (kinda).

I think of the Don, and Bill, as I contemplate my plans and prospects. I keep going over the numbers, the possibilities for retirement, as the idea has loomed up as a salvation of sorts. It still feels too early. Is my main motive that of escape? I know I need a change. I know I’m paralyzed with depression. But yet I function on. There’s a comfort in rehearsing the Barzini … er, retirement, business.

The woes of SXU: I keep thinking that all these vanities will pass. But they still seem so important. Here I am in a class, with all these young people, and their futures are so important, so full of promise. I need to be the adult and to lead them. But under the weight of my depression, I can’t move well.

Bill P. always brought a smile—he was always on, always performing. His schtick didn’t play well with everyone. My UIC classmate, Mary Kay, was thrown off by Bill’s irreverent demeanor during her interview in 1996, a day or two before my own interview. Maybe something about that interaction got me the job? I too was thrown off by Bill—but his voluble, comic, and I would eventually learn, Italian, nature made it easier for me to roll with him. Bill wasn’t, of course, the decision maker in the hiring for the position that I won—but he captured or represented some kind of favor that fell on me then in that life-changing accomplishment of becoming the English Education Coordinator as an Assistant Professor of English at Saint Xavier University. I still can’t believe it, and I still look on that moment as … what … a blessing? Curse? Miracle?

It was lucky in so many ways—to get the local job in a disciplinary area that was my first choice. To have gotten it when I did—with the family I had when I did. To have been able to send three children here—so proudly—when the institution was so worthy, though it did not ever know it, or appreciate it fully enough. 

Through the twists and turns of the late nineties and early aughts—before tenure, there was such energy, hope, vitality. I could name conferences that were transformational—in Arizona (the Grand Canyon being a big part of that) and Florida (on vacation with the family in Orlando, and my catapult into technology with Nicenet and Web Course in a Box). When Angelo became a student in 2004, everything changed, and the promise he pointed towards—intelligent, moral, carefree, free-spirited and free-wheeling engagement in the world—became an incarnation of what it was all about—the life of the academic, the purpose of education, the purpose of raising a family—the promise of it all.

It wasn’t necessarily his greatness (though he was great)—he was just the first of the kids to make that transition into adulthood. And he did it in a time when, despite being in the near aftermath of 9-11, was still a time of hope and promise … and even innocence.

I’m thinking of retirement … only because life has gotten so unbearable at SXU. I take that word “unbearable” from my colleague Amanda—who, young as she is, didn’t retire, but moved out of state and into a different teaching career in high school. Such were/are the conditions of worklife at SXU. Our best and brightest—our future—our most dedicated are made to feel the unbearable, and they leave in search of a better way to work and serve. Her farewell letter was polite and upbeat—no shots fired—and her use of the word “unbearable” was uttered in a more or less matter-of-fact way, but the word now rattles in my mind.

Part of my problem was just how good I had it. When we’re living the dream it’s hard to be aware that it is just a dream, that it all can vanish in the face of oncoming realities. There is some truth to the privilege of being a white guy, an older white guy, a tenured professor white guy. So many of the challenges now swirling about in contemporary society have spotlighted, if not outright critiqued, the accrued benefits of each of those adjectives and nouns—and it’s all justified. But those justifications don’t necessarily rehabilitate the motives or effects of the dismantling of academic mission that our university has suffered since 2015. The victims have been people of all kinds—varied in race, age, and gender. We have all lost—first the faculty, then the students. Our bloated, over-paid, over-self-congratulating administration seems to be the only winner, as we collectively descend into whatever version of us is to settle into place.  

There’s always hope that a new order, a new approach to justice can, yet again, put us on a path to a new prosperity, a structure of things that sidesteps some of the old injustices and deficiencies—and builds on new principles of inclusiveness, youthful vigor, and academic promise. But the grief over the things lost will still be there. Today is Groundhog Day—a “holiday” that invites a hope for sunnier days sooner rather than later. It’s a day also that has come to mean being trapped in a deficient—but improvable—environment, and one complete with all the resources needed for escape and future happiness. In the mixture of hope and imprisonment endemic to Groundhog Day, I struggle with my depression, and I smile at thoughts of Bill P. and Mary Kay, and I shed a tear for all that is unbearable. I hope to wake up to a better tomorrow; I long for February 3rd, and what might lie beyond.

From the Archives: An Early SSW; A Close Encounter; Family, Friends, and Enemies

March 31, 2021

[Potential spoilers! If you’re not caught up on your Gunsmoke episodes (as of April 27, 1958), go listen to “Squaw.” Then come back here!]

Email to Colleague Suzanne Lee, April 8, 2016

From: Angelo Bonadonna <bonadonna@sxu.edu>
Subject: Yesterday’s Encounter
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 08:53:11 -0500
To: Suzanne Lee <slee@sxu.edu>

Hi, Suzanne—it was good seeing you not once, but twice, yesterday!

I want to share with you a little outcome of our first encounter yesterday. Each week with my freshman writing class, I engage in an exercise I call SSW—silent sustained writing (the sibling of SSR). Yesterday when we met, I was on my way to class, and so you made an appearance in my lead-in to my writing session, which I’ve entitled “Miraculous Intrusions of the Day.”

The whole thing brings me a big smile (and some tears as you’ll see if you read on), and I’d like to share it with you. Thank you for being part of the miracles in my life. Let me know if you want me to track down and send you an MP3 of the Gunsmoke episode in question. :)

The writing is not complete or particularly polished, but it does, at the end, touch on grief, and attempts to admire a simple and genuine portrayal of it in the Gunsmoke program. On that level, I want to say again, I’m sorry for […] the sadness around much of our experience these days. But anyway—it was nice seeing you! —Angelo

Here’s the SSW I attached to Suzanne’s emaill:

Miraculous Intrusions of the Day
April 7, 2016:  
 
So much happens in a day that is unexpected. I never would have guessed that I’d be telling Suzanne Lee about George Bahumas running up to me from behind and knocking me down—and how, (at least for the surprise factor), she reminded me of him, though as she said, she hoped there’d be a different outcome than the two of us fighting in the grass. [Comment from 2021: The fight with George Bahumas, (my oldest childhood friend), was the only real, Western-style, fist fight of my life. This was true in 2016, and, somewhat surprisingly, it is still true in 2021, given the the events of the past 5 years at SXU.] 
 
But my surprise conversation with Suzanne is not what I planned to share today. I came to write about another unexpected miraculous intrusion of the day, the Gunsmoke episode, “Squaw,” that I heard on the Old Time Radio station during my morning commute. It caught me by surprise. I’ve never been a Gunsmoke fan, though the show does have some powerful claims on me. The TV version was a favorite of my mother, and I have such warm, simple memories of her watching the show in the basement (?) while she cooked. I have such a devotion to Bonanza, and I think some of the qualities of that show correlate, obviously, to Gunsmoke. Then there’s William Conrad, the great radio actor, maybe the greatest radio voice of all time, but someone destined to become TV’s “Cannon”—such a step down from the Matt Dillon he wanted to play on TV, after giving life to the role on radio. All these, and other, ideas are swirling as I was driving down this morning, listening to “Squaw.” By the end of the show, the tears are welling up in my eyes, unexpectedly. And the tears well up now as I write this. Why? 
 
I’m reminded of King Lear, and the way Shakespeare was able to create a genre—the family drama—a category of experience so powerful, so unique, so important—and so likely to be neglected without the writing and art form, as propelled by a great innovator and artist. King Lear is a tragedy—not of civic matters, or personal ambitions, or tempestuous romances—but rather of parents and children, and their inability to figure out life’s complex ways of putting us in simple, necessary, and fundamental relationships. “Squaw” told of a family conflict, father and son, culture and culture, boy and mother, boy and step-mother—and on all levels, from Freudian sexual motivations, to anthropological confusions, to race relations, to 1950s mores, to fairy tale romances, to current xenophobias, and many swirling dynamics in between—the story strikes a chord.  
 
The boy’s father has remarried—to a Navajo squaw, and the boy is now acting out, getting into bar fights in Dodge. So Matt gets involved, and he and Chester make a visit to the boy’s father. It turns out that the father has married this woman according to Indian custom (where the man “purchases” the woman from the father; note to self: really? is there any accuracy to this thread? is this a case of 1950s racism? but that’s another concern), but he has not married her legally. The boy is living in the shame of being a “squaw man.” His father has disgraced him. The woman is the same age as the boy. So there’s also the narrative of the dirty old man living with the young Indian woman. And one suspects the boy’s attraction to his step-mother causes no little stir to the mix of emotions—the strong hateful emotions he feels towards his new mother. 
 
So Matt and Chester make their trip. They find a woman there—both very beautiful and young, and they further find that, though she can barely speak English, and the father can barely speak Navajo—the marriage is one of genuine love. Kudos to the narrative art of the writers—to “condense” that effect, that impression, in a few verbal exchanges. But the power and authenticity of the love come across to us after all these years and differences, and the woman, in her broken English expresses hope that Matt and Chester will come again—and be fed by her. The sense of hospitality—and the promise of family life is complete in the very brief scene.  
 
Matt prevails on the man to come into town on Saturday to have a legal marriage performed. This will help alleviate the son’s angst—or part of it—or so Matt hopes. 
 
But just what is the nature of the son’s problem? He is very deluded, it seems, about his own motivation—and near the story’s end, after all the horrible tragedy of the family drama has unfolded, Matt Dillon makes the observation about what the son thinks was his motivation. Matt calls out his rationalization explicitly. In doing so, he suggests that the boy was struggling with a mix of perturbed, dark, swirling confusions—about sexual desire, cultural bigotry, family loyalties, the father-kill motive, self-hatred, an Oedipal relationship with his birth mother, and a violence born out of frustrations of efficacy.  
 
So many ideas here—but the tears, I’m sure, stemmed from some simplicities—simplicities of portrayal of the love between these two different people, the father and his new wife who could barely speak to each other. Then there was the portrayal of the grief (spoiler, sorry) of the woman for her dead husband, killed by his own son. The portrayal of grief was twofold. Again, I don’t know the cultural accuracy of the portrayal here, but I do feel the respect that was captured. The woman grieved in a song…and in a way that would not have been offered if it were not genuine. And then there was the knife and the blood—and Matt Dillon’s sleuthing of the crime scene, in part, through his explanation of the widow’s severing of two of her own fingers as an expression of grief for her loss of her husband.

More perspective from 2021

Suzanne Lee was one of those dear friends a professor is blessed to have as a colleague. At every phase of my career at SXU, Suzanne was there—teaching, working on committees, writing articles together, collaborating on teams, and helping me and others adjust to new realities in programs and institutional politics. When she became dean, I felt the School of Education had a chance to recover from its disastrous period of rudderless drift it had endured after the long, slow, and neglected decline of the prior dean. And when Suzanne became provost, I reveled in Rick Venneri’s hallway comment to me, delivered in a nod, with a smile and that confidential gravitas of his, “She’s a straight shooter.”

After Angelo died, she and her partner, Judy, appeared on our doorstep with a pecan pie. I was not there—the family was not there—but sister-in-law Jane was, and she relayed to us later the whole episode—how concerned the visitors were about the pie getting to us, how much they had hoped to be there for us. We couldn’t be there because the whole family had flown to Thailand to recover Angelo. And it now occurs to me: have I ever conveyed to Suzanne how much her gesture of kindness meant to me then, and how much it still means to me now?

It’s hard to blame President Joyner for what happened to Suzanne Lee—i.e., her departure from the university. The two apparently were friends and respected each other. But of course, Suzanne is gone, her career truncated too early at SXU. Whether or not it was Suzanne’s choice to leave, I hold Dr. Joyner responsible, in part, for creating an environment where so many careers have ended prematurely because of, in my view, her flawed vision of who we are, what we should be doing, and how we might position ourselves for growth.

It’s appropriate that, in relaying my impressions of Suzanne’s encounter of April 7, 2016, I thought of childhood memories with George Bahumas. Suzanne’s act was so child-like. She literally ran up behind me—quietly—and put both hands over my eyes, so as to say, “Guess who,” without ever saying it. Can you imagine? How did she have both hands free—wasn’t she carrying anything? Could such a thing happen in the 21th century, with all our sacred notions of “personal space”? Could such a playful encounter occur between a dean and a faculty member ever at SXU?

Update 2021, Looking Back Again, on Angelo, through Suzanne

“Miraculous Intrusions of the Day,” Version 2, would go even deeper into the Angelo archives—before 2008, his year of graduation. Suzanne and I were having a conversation in the second-floor hallway by the stairwell, and Angelo approached to meet up with me for some reason (or maybe not? Maybe it was just one of those chance encounters, where we wound up falling into a conversation because we happened to run into each other? I’m not sure…).

As Suzanne and I conversed, in that animated way we had, I could sense Angelo looking on, maybe too intently, in my peripheral vision. When we finished and Suzanne left, Angelo looked at me, with that grin of his—I mean that really characteristic grin of his that is best described by Virginia Uphues in the documentary (at the 45:29 minute mark).

“What?” I said.

Angelo’s response was destined to become one of my favorite memories of him:

“She digs you!”

And that smile. And then, of course, my smile, because I did not expect him to say that. I didn’t feel a need to explain that I wasn’t Suzanne’s type. It was true that she dug me—and I dug her. Suzanne and I had such a friendship, one filled with sparkling eyes on both our parts and lots of inappropriate language (mostly on her part). Angelo’s observation was one of those moments where you see your kid has not only grown up, but is celebrating a kind of adult thing—here, love and friendship—in a way beyond the silliness and worry of the family drama (to get back to Lear and Gunsmoke). Angelo, in his natural hippie-speak, was being himself, capturing a truth, celebrating his dad, inhabiting the chance moment, but not letting it go till the love was communicated. I put it in the category of another comment he had made a few years earlier, where, after I had driven through the night on the last leg of a long family vacation, he commented (sensing, no doubt, my need for validation of my driving prowess), “You’re a warrior!”—a statement he made without irony, and one that caused (and still does cause) those suffusions of the heart that the recipient (till now) doesn’t talk about. Such power we have for one another as family and friends in affirmations like these. So seldom, it seems, do we (or I at least) use this super-power. It came spontaneously and naturally to Angelo in moments.

I think now of my trollish ways of interacting with loved ones, and I want to do better. And I’ll try.