![\"Gardner](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/50\/133829017_dbdf0ad51e.jpg?w=584\")
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Sunday winsomeness. Just got the scanner working again, and Alice handed me this window onto another world for a test scan.<\/p>\n
This photograph from 1986 (as near as I can remember) offers ocular proof of my distant kinship with Bryan Alexander<\/a>. (Who knew?) It also offers merriment, at least to me. 1986 was not an easy year; in fact, 1986-1989 was quite a bumpy ride. But when I see this photograph, and that brainy fox who for some reason thought it was worth hanging around me (and for some reason still does), I feel merry. I made it out of the trough. Plenty of troughs and mountains since then, of course, but also the knowledge that I made it out–and with that brainy fox still at my side.<\/p>\n Hello, brother from twenty years ago. Be merry! You’ll get your degree, you’ll get a job as a professor, you’ll find more interesting people to learn from than you ever would have imagined (and you could imagine meeting lots of them). Some of your close friends in 1986 are still there, still pushing you to be your best self. New friends, vital companions, keep coming. In three years you’ll be learning computer animation on an Amiga. In four years you’ll have your first email account, and meet the first friend you’ve discovered online (over a bulletin board called the Blue Ridge Express). Later that year, your son will be born. In six years you’ll get your degree and move to San Diego for two years to teach at the University of San Diego. In eight years you’ll move to Fredericksburg and begin your career at the University of Mary Washington (nee Mary Washington College). Two months after your arrival in Fredericksburg, your daughter will be born. Things get even wilder from there–and then wilder still.<\/p>\n Troughs ahead. Mountains ahead. Be merry!<\/p>\n Photograph by Michael Thomas<\/em><\/p>\n EDIT: The photographer contacted me with the following corrections:<\/p>\n The B&W photo you blogged was from the fall of 1987, from your and Alice’s first visit to meet Helen [Michael’s daughter]…. The same B&W sequence, of which I believe you have a full set of copies, includes one of you introducing Helen (in her swinging bassinet) to electric guitar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Apparently even in the full throes of late grad school fugue<\/em> I was doing something productive for the next generation, although history will record that Helen became a drummer, not a guitarist. I think the principle holds anyway.<\/p>\n And now my friend Michael has made a guest appearance on my blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sunday winsomeness. Just got the scanner working again, and Alice handed me this window onto another world for a test scan. This photograph from 1986 (as near as I can remember) offers ocular proof of my distant kinship with Bryan … Continue reading