Yea verily--Tis time to retale the tale of "The Booth"--Prologue

End of another semester, and of a career for me, but not of "The Booth," now immortalized in the caricature of me in "my" retirement paper. 

Booth?

'Tis surely time, yea verily,  to retell the tale, for the benefit of the "young-uns" who do not know how "booth" became a verb, and while we still, every time we meet to imbibe, toast "To Bob," not with saddness but with much revelry and great memories and sayings.
Henceforth and forsooth, here is the beginning of 16 chapters telling that sacred tale, last retold told in 2014. (Note--the booth location twas once Bennigans and now is Old Chicago's--alas the booth plaque, which once hung on the wall of the original booth is no more.)

"Booth" is a verb, a story and reverie

"We need to booth," said a colleague the other day, and we knew what she meant. End of semester. Time to get together for a little adult beverage and toasts and stories and jokes and release from  higher education's tensions, rules and nonsense. 

Boothing, The Illidge, The Clark, cribbage and spirits

But "Booth" has a long history for us in our department, I'd guess about 14 years. I've told this story before on this blog, but realized it has been a decade since my friend Bob Illidge retired, and nine years since he died, most of us attending his funeral in Wichita, Kansas.
After all these years, at this week's booth, here was the first toast: "To Bob." Such is the power of a friendship and a gathering.
So, in his honor, here is the first of about 16 chapters in the story of "The Booth," first written in 2009. I'll post one each day.

From Aug. 9, 2009

"Booth is a verb...a love story, prologue"

Once upon a time long ago in a university department, two friends needed to get off campus one afternoon, to get away from the inanity of higher ed, from students who didn’t care, from stupid rules and useless meetings and endless paperwork, from administrators who didn’t care about teaching.
Major universities worth their salt have neighborhood pubs around them for the students, and select ones for the faculty. But not so for where they labored against ignorance, a commuter-oriented university in the midst of a rich religious-right Republican suburb of a government-welfare capital city in a somewhat backward, if friendly, state. And this was grievous indeed for the Irish Catholic, veteran advertising professor whose sense of humor offset the injustices of life. He knew he needed a “little something” to wash away another day. Forsooth, the younger professor and chairman, a recovering tee-totaling fundamentalist, had become an expert over the years in the nonsense of administration, and knew he also needed respite of a liquid kind to keep his sanity.
 

Yea verily, they escaped the halls of mediocrity one day, a cribbage board and cards in hand, and ventured down to a franchise bar and restaurant no more than a half-mile from the austere campus, and found in the back, a booth paneled in dark-stained wood, cushioned with fake green leather, and set off from the rest of the restaurant by fake dark greenery. Then they saw the bartender, a cheerful, bosomy young woman who both knew because she was a student, as with most of theirs, paying her way through college by working long hours in fooderies and drinkeries for cheap pay in hope of good tips.

"To be continued…  "

Retirement reverie--just "Wow."

Zach Nash presenting

A week ago, I was overwhelmed by my family, past and present colleagues and students honoring me at a retirement reception at UCO. A week from now, I will be retired.

The caricature...Love The Vista touch

I'm still recovering  emotionally from that reception, still sifting through photos and writing thank yous. 
One of the highlights was the special 8 page newspaper of comments by my students and colleagues from over the years, plus photos, put together  in secret by colleagues and students, past and present, especially colleague Mark Zimmerman, former student Zach Nash, and my Vista editor Kateleigh Mills. What a treasure. 

David Duty, Jeff Hagy, Mark Zimmerman, Sherry and Gary sump

So you see my reaction to the cartoon on page two, presented by former student Zach Nash. Cartoon by Steve Hill, husband of my colleague Dez Hill. 
Plus friends reading the paper, including grandchildren, and a link to the paper. Just Wow.

Katherine and Sarah Clark reading about Granddad

More photos coming later this weekend--sorted by family, students, colleagues and the press.
Here's the link to "my" paper and part of page one: Coffee with Clark special edition

 **

I am so grateful. 

Mark Zimmerman presenting

Photos by Lauren Bieri, Mark Zimmerman, Dez Hill

Top half of the best retirement gift ever for an "old" newspaperman

Night moods

Night moods, 5 1/2 x 7 1/2. 300 # d'Aarches

Sometimes conversations, readings, memories, music bring night moods, not of fear, but of wanting, wanting a stormy sky, fast-moving clouds, wind in the branches, swaying silhouettes of  trees. Time for reverie, for imagination, for insight from darkness. For free-flowing watercolor.

Words you have to look up, and mountains

Mountain journey, 9 by 12 watercolor, 140# d'Arches

Books that you have to circle words in--I love it, and go back and look them up. Reminds me of mountains--no matter what you see, there's always the unknown, more to learn.
It's mountain mood today, reading  The Living Mountain by the late Nan Shepherd about the Cairngorms of northeast England, another place I'd never heard of.
I found the book in another I'm reading, Landmarks, By Robert MacFarland of Cambridge University, about the deep place names of local places in England and Scotland, complete with partial  glossaries of the old names.  Names as landmarks...so powerful for any country, and any reader or writer and seer.
I first found him about a year ago in his book The Old Ways, about walking the ancient paths in England.
In this recent book, he devotes most of a chapter to Shepherd's book, and writes the forward to her most recent edition. It's a book of a lifetime of discovering mountains up close, not from a distance.
Other than English and Scottish terms I don't know, there are words throughout that I've circled, going back at the end of each chapter to look them up in the OED.
Discovery.
Thus today's watercolor, Mountain Journey, exploring and risking new paths in watercolor.

Oklahoma spring

Oklahoma spring, 9 by 12 watercolor, 140# d'Arches

Crisp.
Sun in and out. Spattering of rain.
Thunderheads building,.
Clouds scudding across the sky.
Trees leafing out in spatterings of green.
Oklahoma spring.