Last Modified: 120224
And now for something utterly narcissistic …
(You can still escape this. Just click your "home" button!)
This picture shows me wearing a "Java Man" T-shirt (showing a rock-art figure with a head shaped like a coffee cup), standing beside the Southwestern rock art that seems to have been the inspiration for it. Like coffee, I have always liked rock art, although it has a troublesome kinship to graffiti, which I hate (rather the way mustard often tastes dangerously like horseraddish).
Whatever the merit of rock art as a genre, it is a merry romp to bound around looking for and at it, a challenging puzzle to worry about what it most likely meant, and a source of nifty web-page graphics.
(On this trip I found one glyph that looked exactly like a Chinese character for "map" 圖. If that ever leaks out it could probably spawn a whole new wave of crack-pot treasure hunting. Naturally I am not telling where I was at the time!)
Atop the uppermost battlement of the castle of the lords of Blarney, near Cork, in a bit of the parapet hanging out over a space through which to drop disgusting stuff upon marauders, there is, in the bottom row of stones, a block of black limestone called the "Blarney Stone." It is believed to convey the gift of Irish eloquence if one manages to kiss it. (It's not easy kissing a stone in the bottom row over a long drop, so only true seekers are accommodated. To add to the merriment, the current lords of Blarney require that would-be kissers lie on their backs throughout the process.)
Opinions vary about how long eloquence lasts once a person has kissed the stone. Some say it never wears off. Others say the spell is good for a mere seven years, after which people will cease to find the kisser convincing any more. Queen Elizabeth I used "blarney" as a term of condemnation for Irish eloquence after one of the lords of Blarney had apparently let the spell wear off. (But then Americans are suspicious of the heritage of Congressman Buncombe too. 'Tis the fate of the eloquent to be seen right through some of the time.)
Being college provost meant that I had to preside over graduation. As MC I had three main duties:
- Give opening remarks that calm the graduates down so that they don't keep rootin' and tootin' and carryin' on every time somebody says "graduates."
- Ad lib when something goes wrong and the frantic backstage staff hoarsely whispers "Send in the clowns!"
- Shake every (!) graduate's hand.
Although it was the third of these duties that inspired the most sympathy, the hardest part was actually the first. My handlers told me that my remarks were supposed to be "uplifting, forgettable, and brief, and the greatest of these is brief." But whoever heard of an academic being brief?! Especially behind a fine big pulpit with a captive audience of several thousand!
The curious symbol on the pulpit is the logo of UCSD. It is supposed to remind you of the library building, plus a blade on the bottom to show that we are on the "cutting edge." (It does not remind you of a battle ship mounted on a surf board.)
The potted plants in front of the pulpit show that graduation is an extremely dignified occasion.
Back in the mists of time my ol' grandpaw met President Hoover, and for the rest of his life dwelt upon the great pleasure that the encounter had brought to him, not because he felt honored to meet the President of the United States — on the whole he took an appropriately dim view of politicians — but rather because he noticed that the President had a grease spot on his tie, clearly justifying the wearing of greasy ties for the rest of the male population of his generation.
When Big Bill blew through La Jolla in 1997 he naturally stopped to see Warren College, and I am happy to say that he was a follower in the tradition of President Hoover. So like my ol' grandpaw before me, I have taken an important fashion tip from the White House and have stopped bothering about laundering ties. (As far as I remember he had not dyed his hair green. That may have happened when I scanned the photograph. Then again, perhaps I misremember.)
On the right you see me welcoming [UC] President Atkinson and Governor Davis to the groundbreaking for the new Warren College Administrative Complex. Coincidently the same building complex was to be mostly devoted to extremely expensive and politically popular computer science facilities. But I doubt that is why they were all there; I'm sure it was obvious to all that the important part would the new Warren College offices.
When I stepped down as Warren Provost I also officially stepped down as professor, and became "emeritus," which is a polite term for "gone to seed." The world rejoiced with no fewer than four retirement parties:
I felt very honored. (I should have recorded all the kind things people said, however. I am not used to that, and it was all so embarrassingly invigorating that I have repressed nearly all memories of the details! I normally try to do that only with bad stuff!)
The picture at the left shows some of the retirement speakers listening to my reply, whatever it was. The picture on the right shows a favorite student, Ben Graham, embracing me on behalf of favorite undergraduates everywhere (although we had to be careful not to slobber on each other's ties).
Retirement doesn't mean you stop living, or anyway not immediately. It means they stop paying you for working and start paying you for merely existing. And people ask you how you are "keeping busy." (If you say you lie in a hammock reading whodunits, they don't believe you or they scowl or both.) Mostly I have kept teaching and serving on various committees and making a bureaucratic nuisance of myself.
In 2007 I spent a semester teaching in Hong Kong. Here you see me with some Hong Kong anthropology students failing to fall off the roof of a boat as a squall develops in the background. Hong Kong is a lot better than most places on this earth.
Costa Rica has rain forests, and one should check out a rain forest from time to time, especially if one normally hangs out in a dry climate. So I went to Costa Rica.
One of the adventures Costa Rica sells to tourists is something called "zip lining." I have an all-season overcoat with a zip lining, which can be a bit challenging to deal with, but I thought to myself, "I've used that old coat for years many times; how can a zip lining still be an adventure?" When I asked people about why I would need a zip lining in a tropical zone, some giggled and some looked shocked, and some just shook their heads.
I am older and wiser now. The picture shows me dangling above a rain forest.
Much of my time these days is spent fussing over my web site. It has expanded substantially from course syllabi and occasional class handouts to being my principal publishing outlet for propagating the true truth and combatting all those false truths one keeps finding out there. (Nobody reads anything anyway, so one might as well save a few trees.)
After retirement I finally got around to getting up a lot of stuff on Chinese popular Buddhism, including cool stuff about hell and its torments. (I assigned it in a couple of classes, and students didn't notice it was cool. What do college students know about cool?!) The picture shows me sitting at my laptop surrounded by pictures of hell. On the whole, it is better to read about hell than to go there.
These pictures weren't really taken after death, but it is as close as I am likely to get to being able to post a postmortal picture myself. There is not a lot of detail on the face, but then there wouldn't be, now, would there?
(Who'd have thought elbows would be such a prominent part of a person once all the squishy bits are out of the way?! But then who'd have thought I had such wimpy illia?)