Emory

Formal entrance to the Emory campus on the corner of North Decatur and Oxford.

Emory is a "green" campus. Recycling is really a priority in a lot of exciting ways. Below is a food garden in the middle of campus.

The Methodist chapel on the corner of North Decatur and Oxford.


I loved this sign. It is in front of a building the apparently want to change in some way. The Emory area is *perfect* (Santa Fe Opera perfect) and an historic district. I like that it is a certificate of "appropriateness."






This is the museum next to the library. I like that the architecture seems traditional, but the entrance is a triangle.

Sewanee The University of the South

I didn't take enough photos... and I doubt they would have captured the mood of the campus/town - but this is Sewanee - hands down the most beautiful college campus I have ever visited. All of the buildings are stone (like the library below). The houses look like doll houses. There are old barns on the outer edges of the campus/town. Horses graze in the green fields. Neil told me that the student in the regular semesters wear black robes when they go to class. Old school!


We were searching for a mummy that was photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt and appeared in Life Magazine in the 1950s. Neil believes the mummy is a mummy Flannery O'Connor described in Wise Blood (he is writing an article to make all of the connections). I started calling the public relations office about the mummy when I landed in Atlanta on Monday. The public relations person did research and found there were two mummies. One that was owned by a fraternity (and no one knew where that was). And held in Woods Lab on campus. As the week continued and research continued, we found that the second mummy (that we were hoping to see) was buried in the campus cemetery. We didn't find where it was buried, but below is a picture of the cemetery.

Celebrating 40

Today we celebrated the Friends of the Library and a long-time volunteer Jim, who has volunteered at Fogelson for 18 years! We had lunch delivered from Pranzo's - which was amazing.


Below is the library staff and Friends - Brother Jim, Stephen, me, Jim, Laura, Larry, Toni, Cindy, and Tom.

Fogelson's Birthday

The library on campus turned 40 today! It is an amazing library. As a librarian I am proud that a library built 40 years ago (over 55,000 square feet) is still a space we are growing into in 2010. The library has a lot of issues with ADA, electricity, and plumbing - but for the most part it is an amazingly well-planned structure. We had cake and we are having celebrations all week.

Lewis

Lewis had its official opening in Albuquerque on Monday. It is not officially connected in any way with CSF or CSF in Albuquerque - but the people who ran CSF in Albuquerque have worked hard to build a relationship with Lewis (based out of Chicago) in order to open a new school to serve the city. Lewis is a Lasallian Christian Brothers school, as was CSF before September of last year. Here is a press release. The building is located on Louisiana - right across from Coronado Mall.

Yesterday's Snow

CSF Campus.

Arriving home.

Quiet Pleeezzze!

For the last 2 days Fogelson Library has been the set for a film being made in Santa Fe called The Loop.



Below is the director's chair and the stars' chairs.







The film's logo is below. The film is about Lyman, a perpetual college student and highway worker, who has a parrot fly into his house out of the blue.


My colleague, Laura, who was "Megan" in the library scenes.


Below are just a few pictures I got of the shoot. It is hard to explain how totally and completely the crew and their equipment took over our space.

The crew was a lot of fun - really a great experience for us (despite the chaos). They were really generous with letting us walk around and watch whatever we wanted. And we found out that movie production crews yell "Quiet please" and "Shhhhh" more than any librarian!






Below Fiona (Rachel Nichols) Val (playing herself) and Lyman (Jackson Hurst).

Return

The College opened with classes this week. It is hard to believe, really.

Below is the ribbon cutting ceremony for the school's reopening. The Governor, College President, and Mayor are below. The ribbon cutting ceremony happened right in front of the library. I can only imagine the confusion this image might create in the future - the grand opening of the library?




Below are pictures from the welcome back dinner. The plan was to have it outside, but rain storms required that we move it into the library.

The Last Game

When I was thinking about the legislative efforts to save the College of Santa Fe in February, I felt like it was a football game that we might not win unless we were really lucky.

Well, we weren't lucky, and the legislative session closed before the bill that would save the college made it through the Finance Committee (or more accurately, the Finance Committee refused to hear the bill despite an outcry from students and community members - and the session closed).

Tonight the Santa Fe City Council will vote on the purchase of the College. It feels like the last game in a long and painful season. It feels like the quarterback was injured early in the season, the crowd stopped buying tickets, and the team never pulled together because the owner decided to furlough everyone except the box office manager and a couple other manager-type people.

I am actually very optimistic about the outcome of tonight's meeting. I can't help it. Despite a loosing season, I think we have proven we can bear the pain and the single-minded goal of the box office manager and the couple others is heading for the goal and creating an entirely new sporting event.

Santa Fe City Council will be broadcast live online at this link. Just click on Chanel 28 Live around 6pm to hear the beginning of the game.

Physical Manifestations

This was the scene when I arrived at work today (you can see the library in the background). These are pictures of the College entrance being destroyed. I knew this was coming and I thought I would be upset, but actually it was so gratifying to see the physical manifestation of what we have been experiencing for the last several months. Today I am loving these pictures.

Here is a link to the entrance a couple of weeks ago.

Entrance Gone

Last week they started tearing down the College's old entrance. The first picture was from March 2008 and I took the lower picture last week.

Images from University of Southern Mississippi

This is on of the buildings in the middle of the USM campus.



Brett Favre is one of USM's famous graduates.




Below is an image from the Cochran Center were the conference was held. The campus has done an amazing job of mixing old and new architecture.

So This is What Happens when a College Closes.... Part 3

Dreams

On the nights I sleep, I have had some really interesting dreams.

Last night I had a dream a colleague and I were sitting in the kitchen in the bottom floor of a classroom building. As we were sitting and talking, we saw a person rushing into the building with a canister of tear gas. We knew that the person was getting ready to release tear gas to save everyone in the building from a dangerous person on the second floor. Even though we knew the tear gas was going to be released, we were not allowed to leave the building because if the dangerous person saw us leaving the building they might create more trouble for the person with the tear gas and we would all be in danger.

So we had to wait, knowing the building would soon be filled with gas that would make it difficult to breathe.

At the end of the dream, the person was able to release the tear gas and everyone on the second floor exited the building safely. My colleague and I stayed through the release of the tear gas and waited for everyone to leave. Just before we left, we leisurely went to the refrigerator and got our sack lunches. We calmly exited the building without chaos or stress and no harm from the tear gas.

I don't know if the dangerous person was captured.

Entrance to the College

The main entrance to the College has been under construction since January. It was our "welcome back!" gift from the holiday break.

The construction of the new entrance required that the road construction crew actually close off left turn options for entering the College for all traffic heading westward. The inability to turn left insured that people attempting to get to the school had to follow a maze of craziness which required a dangerous U-turn or a leisurely drive through a local shopping center parking lot filled with speed-bumps.

The College has been in the news with all the financial trouble, so it may seem strange (and maybe unrelated) that the entrance is being reconstructed and moved 100 feet down the road. But actually the financial troubles and the moving entrance are all related, making the driving maze a reminder of the mistakes past College administrators have made and then runaway from.

The entrance is being moved because a piece of property facing this busy street was sold - it was sold to a bank, no less. This "bank job" has been a thorn in the side of the current administration, faculty, staff, and students for about 2 years. The deal with the bank was a land sale, but required that the College pay for all of the upgrades to the entrance and utilities - making the "business deal" a near break-even "opportunity" for the College. In exchange for this great "opportunity" the College has the pleasure of having a much smaller entrance - and for the last 2 months this entrance has been nearly inaccessable.

This week the construction is wrapping up. The new driveway has been paved and safe left turns from westward heading traffic are now allowed. As I approached the new entrance this week for the first time, I was unable to really enjoy the glory of the new drive. Heading toward the College there was a bit of road chaos. Since I was driving, I can only report what I think I saw - I don't know for sure.

About 200 feet away from the new entrance there appeared to be an accident involving a white hearse. There were police cars, and people were out of their cars walking around. The hearse seemed to be at a standstill. I was distracted by the incident and curious about a hearse being involved in any traffic mishaps at 9am on a Tuesday morning.

As I passed this accident scene, I realized the old entrance was closed and the new one was opened. I drove down to the new entrance and I turned in to the driveway where I thought I should turn. As I was making the turn I was confronted by a "do not enter" sign. You know, one of those very serious signs you see on a freeway entrance -- do not enter. So I stopped dead in my tracks, fully prepared to make the 2-mile drive around to the back side of the school. I looked around to see what I was doing wrong - to see if there was still heavy equipment at work or if I had been tricked for months - that this really wasn't ever going to be an entrance to the College. I could not determine any logical reason not to enter, so I continued driving down the short new driveway.

Having used the entrance on another occasion this week, I took better note of this "do not enter" sign. It is actually a permanent sign - and there is indeed a part of the "entrance" that one should not enter - but the sign appears to apply to the entire entrance.

Even in its current tortured state, the errors and misunderstanding which seem to have occurred throughout the entire life of the College apparently must go on.

So This is What Happens when a College Closes.... Part 2

Since there will be such a large number of people laid off at the college in May - and since we apparently seem more worried about being unemployed than other industries - the New Mexico Unemployment Office and New Mexico Workforce Connection came to give us a pre-meeting about unemployment yesterday (they will officially come back closer to our lay-off date).

I had been looking at this meeting as an interesting opportunity to learn more about something new - but by yesterday morning I began to dread the meeting -- like you dread going to a funeral. In the end, it wasn't as sad as a funeral, but it wasn't interesting either.

They gave us some basic information about how to apply and how the process will work once we are in the system. One disappointing piece of news was that it does not seem we can take classes in lieu of proving we are searching for work. According to the presenters yesterday, if you have a Bachelor's Degree you are considered "educated" and so you can't take classes or earn additional certificates and have the classes count as "searching for work."

While I certainly will be searching madly for a job, I was hoping I could solidify my "proof of searching" by taking legal research classes and working on a paralegal certificate. I still have some research to do on this, but the basic answer to working on a certificate or a degree while earning unemployment seems to be "no" (because if you aren't taking classes you have to be available for full-time work).

I had a realization this morning. Maybe there will be so many really smart people on unemployment this year (people who are searching for work, but also frustrated by a system that does not work - or does not work for everyone) that these smart people will take their extra time and reform the unemployment system.

So This is What Happens when a College Closes.... Part One

In the 1990s Joel and I would occasionally drive by a college campus in Milton, Wisconsin as we made our way from Joel's family home to Cornell College where we were attending school. The campus we passed on our journey was the small quaint campus of Milton College.

The Milton College campus was silent. Abandon. The school had closed in the early 1980s, and as we passed it on our way out of Wisconsin, we were often struck in to silence too. How did a college like Milton close? What happens when a college with grand brick buildings and a courtyards stops teaching classes and the students leave? What happened to the college to leave these structures standing as headstones to what had once lived in Milton, WI?

I have thought about Milton College a lot in the last 2 years, and now I think about it every day. At the time it closed its doors in 1982 it was the oldest operating college in Wisconsin (echoing the College of Santa Fe's position in New Mexico).

My sister was laid off from her job working for big national company in January. The office in Albuquerque closed and all of the employees lost their jobs. When my sister lost her job this year and the office started its close-down procedure, she talked to me about having these realizations, "oh, so this is what happens when an office closes."

Now the College of Santa Fe will be closing on May 22nd - either for the summer or indefinitely. Everyone at the College will loose their jobs on that day. Like the job losses I have experienced with my family in corporate America, the College must prepare for its closing. With the college closing certain things must be arranged for students, faculty, and staff. These arrangements have been both horrifying and comforting. Life will go on.

The closing of the College is pretty strange. I have tried to anticipate some of the things that will occur, but even in my mental preparation I have been surprised that the sadness is deeper than I anticipated. I was not at all prepared for the ways uncertainty and confusion leave deep wounds. And like my sister, I too am struck almost daily with the realization, "oh, so this is what happens when a college closes."

As much as possible, I would like to share some of those experiences. I think many colleges will close in the coming years. There were lots of college that closed in the 1980s along with Milton College. I think we have reached another point in the ebb and flow of our economy where these changes and losses are inevitable. It is just the beginning of the suffering for small liberal arts colleges in America.

Here is a link to an article published in 1997, remembering how Milton College closed. For now I will let this quote from the article about Milton College speak for the College of Santa Fe's current situation:

"We all were crushed. Devastated. We couldn't believe it," Koeffler said. "It was so sad to watch people you knew loved teaching and this college to be let go. It was watching people suffer."

4th Down, Biggest Needs are Now

The hearing this morning for the College of Santa Fe bill -- House Bill 577 -- went very well. The committee gave the bill a unanimous "do pass." All of the committee members spoke about their concerns for the funding of the school, but kept re-focusing their discussion on the educational aspects - and for the educational aspects alone they passed the bill.

The discussion was good with questions about having a higher tuition and allowing the College of Santa Fe to exist as a special school within the state system.

The bill now goes on to Senate Finance. I had the chance to talk to Jim Fries (Highlands University President) this morning before the meeting and asked him what we needed to do for Senate Finance. He said he believes the committee is currently 2 votes shy of a "do pass." I asked him who we should talk to. He said the chair of the committee and all of the republicans. He said they don't seem to be strongly opposed, but on the fence - so the letters, calls, and emails need to start. We believe the hearing for this bill can be as soon as Monday afternoon.

Just to be clear - this mission about the College is no longer about my job. My job is gone. My salary from now until May 15th has been cut by about 75%. I have no solid reason to believe I will ever work at the College of Santa Fe again.

It is just obvious to me that a town the size of Santa Fe should have a four year school. Since coming here 9 years ago, I have occasionally looked at earning other degrees - and I started working on a degree at the College last year - but being a working adult and earning a degree in Santa Fe is really impossible without a 4 year school here. UNM is close. Highlands University is close. A smattering of 4 year options are available at the Community College - but none of these are really good options for people who live, work, and raise a family in Santa Fe and want to expand their skills/education. Santa Fe is currently the largest city in the state without a 4-year state-run affordable college. This needs to change.

Thanks for all you are doing. It is making a big difference!

Here is the committee. Emails are good, calls are great, and if you happen to be downtown Santa Fe, a short stop in your Senator's office to sign a register of support is the greatest.

John Arthur Smith, Chair (Dem; Hidalgo, Luna & Sierra)
986-4363
State Capitol Rm 325A
Santa Fe, NM 87501
john.smith@nmlegis.gov

Carlos R. Cisneros, Vice Chair (Dem; L. A., R. A. Santa Fe & Taos)
State Capitol Rm 325B
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4365
carlos.cisneros@nmlegis.gov

Rod Adair (Republican; Chaves & Lincoln)
State Capitol Rm 414D
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4385
radair@dfn.com

Pete Campos (Dem; Guad,Mora,SM,SF & Torrance)
State Capitol Rm 302B
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4311
petecampos@newmexico.com

Carroll H. Leavell (Republican; Eddy & Lea)
State Capitol Rm 415C
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4278
leavell4@leaco.net

Howie C. Morales (Dem; Catron, Grant & Socorro)
State Capitol Rm 300D
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4863
howiemorales@yahoo.com

Steven P. Neville (Republican; San Juan)
State Capitol Rm 415A
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4266
nmsenate@msn.com

Gearld Ortiz y Pino (Dem; Bernalillo)
State Capitol Rm 218B
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4380
jortizyp@msn.com

Mary Kay Papen (Dem; Dona Ana)
State Capitol Rm 300B
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4270
marykay.papen@nmlegis.gov

Nancy Rodriguez (Dem; Santa Fe)
State Capitol Rm 301A
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4264

Sue Wilson Beffort (Republican; Bernalillo, Sand, SF & Torrance)
State Capitol Rm 415G
Santa Fe, NM 87501
986-4395
sue.beffort@nmlegis.gov

The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg

Legislators keep referring to the College as the goose that laid the golden egg. I know the story of the goose and the golden egg is dramatic and sad, but I couldn't remember the specifics of the story. So I looked it up. It is a story about a couple who have a goose that lays golden eggs. It lays one golden egg a day. They decide that the goose must be filled with golden eggs, so they decide to cut the goose open to get the eggs. When they kill the goose, they discover that the goose is just like all other geese inside.

I don't really know how this applies to the College. And the more I think of it, I think the goose has already been opened up. All of the staff and faculty have been laid off and nearly all of the students are applying to other schools in case the College doesn't open again in the fall. Some are very committed to Santa Fe - but like the staff and faculty - applying for new opportunities has opened their eyes to new and interesting options.

I am totally committed to seeing a college continue in Santa Fe. I passionately feel that one-size is not for everyone - especially when it comes to higher education. There are no other schools like the college of Santa Fe in New Mexico (in programs, real estate, and community). I think a college needs to be here as an opportunity for New Mexicans. I also believe any school in Santa Fe is in the unique opportunity to attract people from all over the country. While other state schools in New Mexico may occasionally attract out-of-state students, a college in Santa Fe exists in a unique environment that I believe will draw people from around the country and the world.

Today I listened to the House session online. I could hear the crowds in the gallery and I could envision all of the activity on the floor for the NM House. After much discussion the vote was called. The votes opened - and I knew lights were illuminating on the wall as representatives placed their votes - but online all I could hear was silence. The speaker said, "the vote is closing" and still there was no indication about the number lights on the online audio. Finally, after long moments it was announced that the bill passed the house 49-16.

The vote is good. The 2/3 approval means that an emergency clause that is attached to the bill will follow it into the Senate. The emergency clause gives the college a whisper of hope for being able to reopen this fall.

On to the Senate where the really hard battles begin.....

OMG!

The news is now public -- that we are all loosing our jobs (many of us were just notified yesterday). I am so insulted by the following email that is being sent without request to some faculty and staff. Email about selling their homes! I can't even include the broker's name for fear he will get some publicity. I know there are vultures circling the campus... but this is personal! Come on! This is sick!

.....

I am sorry to hear about the difficulties at the College of Santa Fe. Unfortunately, the economy is having widespread impact on most of us. As a realtor in Santa Fe for the past 17 years, I‘ve had the opportunity to work for several faculty and staff members at the College. If I can assist you with an evaluation of the Santa Fe real estate market or any property needs, I would like to help. Also, if you would like to just talk about where I feel the market is going, please give me a call. Thank you.

Best regards,

XXXXXXXXXX

Associate Broker

Santa Fe Properties, Inc.

Cutting Costs

With the news that our salaries at the College are going to be reduced substantially within the week, I made the calls this morning that I have been dreading for months. I cut a subscription and cut back on some other automatic payments. I feel fortunate that we are not in danger of loosing our home right now and we don't have to make extreme modifications to our lives yet, but for the last several months I have been looking ahead to these cancellations with dread, fear, and a lot of anger.

With all of these negative emotions leading up to the cancellations I made today, I find it strange that I feel a real sense of happiness and relief. Maybe it is relief that I have made these cost reductions and service eliminations and I still feel ok. Maybe it is relief -- a feeling that I at least have some control over this little thing in my life. Maybe it is happiness that I don't have to worry about making these payments any more. I don't actually feel that I have lost a single thing. I still feel like the same person I was yesterday when I was making these payments and accessing these services. Hopefully some of the cost cuts I made today will let me keep more important parts of my life intact for a longer period of time. More cost cutting measures may be required in the future, things that won't be so easy to let go, but I am going to try to look at those days ahead without dread, I am going to try to look ahead with interest. I wonder what these new experiences will bring.