CARRIE BATES
I have been thinking about this piece of writing for the past two-and-a-half months. That’s a long pre-writing stage, even by my standards. I jotted down an outline, in good academic fashion, that neatly organized the points I wanted to cover, and then I was stuck. What writing form should I select for my contribution to this celebration of your distinguished career?
Initially, I thought that a short scholarly essay, philosophical in nature, would be ideal. This is, after all, a festschrift: Essays in Honor of DCK Curry. But then I remembered that I don’t tend to write to short philosophical essays. (Sorry about all those twenty-page essays I inflicted on you!) Lots of people will be contributing to this project, and I ought not to take up more than my fair share of it. So I crossed off that form from the list of possibilities.
Next, I thought I would write a testimonial that explained how influential you have been on my intellectual and professional development. But then I remembered that I already did that once, when you received a distinguished teaching award, and you were a bit embarrassed by all that praise. I acknowledged that embarrassment and told you that it was good to step outside of your comfort zone—that it builds character. So I’ve already played that card once, and I don’t think I should play it again. No testimonial.
After I rejected both the essay and the testimonial, I wondered if I could write a clever Socratic dialogue about the nature of retirement. But retirement doesn’t seem to fall into the same category of “X” that most Socratic dialogues address: virtue, piety, knowledge, love, justice, the soul. And while I thoroughly enjoyed the grad project when I wrote letters to Plato as though I were his cousin Eumachia, I wasn’t sure I could pull off an entire elenchus. So I reluctantly crossed that off the list, too.
Then it hit me—a letter! Not from the imaginary Eumachia to Plato, but from one real friend to another. Not exactly a private letter, as it is part of this festschrift, but a semi-private one that recounts a slice of our shared experiences over the past twenty-plus years. Not a rigidly structured chronology that picks out just the high points, but a sort of gentle amble that stops frequently along the way to re-visit the encounters and adventures that make me smile, in the hope that they will make you smile, too. And that seems just right for two retired professors who no longer have to conform to academic standards.
Do you remember the first time I walked into your office? I was a nervous non-traditional undergraduate coming in to sign up for a Classical Studies minor. I wish I had known then how much I was going to enjoy the Ancient Philosophy class that minor required—I would have signed up for a philosophy minor at the same time. I also wish I had known then what good friends we were going to become—I wouldn’t have wasted two semesters by just being nodding acquaintances in the hallway and in the Greenery when we both were filling up on the requisite caffeine requirements for the day.
That Ancient Philosophy class opened my eyes to the joys of philosophy in general, and I cannot thank you enough for that! It also led to more philosophy classes, to Philosophy Forum, to philosophy conferences, to my graduate work, and to tutoring and TA experiences. How many philosophy classes did I audit with you? Five? Modern; Existentialism; Religion; the Aristotle Seminar; and now Medieval. And then there was my dream semester during my graduate work, when you and I read Plato, Seneca (not your favorite, I know!), Philo, and Paul as I attempted to discover what those authors understood about the nature of justification. Here, too, I have to thank you, not just for that semester, but for all the work you put in as my unofficial grad advisor. Looking back on that now, I think I was pretty cheeky to ask you to serve in that way, because I’m sure that the university did not provide any recompense for the hours you devoted to helping me. And my undying gratitude does not make up for your sacrifice, so I probably owe you a bottle of single-malt scotch aged in a sherry barrel.
How many philosophy conferences did we attend together? At least fifteen, I think. And how often did we get lost on the way to Oneonta before we had GPS navigation aids? Every time. But my favorite getting lost story is from the conference we attended in Rhode Island when I presented a paper on the medieval theodicies of Augustine and Boethius. We didn’t get lost on the drive to Rhode Island, but we were good and lost when we were trying to walk to the restaurant we had chosen for dinner our second evening there. You had the map; the undergraduates and I were following you like ducklings in a row. We walked for about fifteen minutes, but just could not find the restaurant. Eventually you stopped; one of the undergraduates asked to see the map, gently turned it right side up, and handed it back to you. We were at the restaurant within five minutes.
One of my favorite Oneonta memories occurred during one of our late-night sessions in the hotel. A large number of the undergraduates had crowded into your room (I think you were sharing it with Tim, but maybe it was Brian), and we were having an intense discussion about something. Will Hancock disagreed with the position you took, and he passionately burst out, “No, Dr. Curry, that can’t be right.” I don’t remember the topic, and I don’t remember the year, but I do remember thinking then, as I still do now, that surely one mark of a good teacher is to create an atmosphere that encourages deep thinking and provides the freedom for students to disagree with the position the teacher holds.
Do you remember the Greek language class you offered in the fall of 2007 (I think that was the year)? You held it on Friday afternoons from 3:00–5:00, a time that every teacher I have ever known wanted to be off campus and either at home or at happy hour. I suspect that you chose that time because I wanted to take the class and I was working at the elementary school in Canton then. Friday afternoons at 3:00 were the only convenient time for me, and like magic, that’s when the class was offered. I never did master the accent placement, but I sure enjoyed the time we spent with Dicaeopolis, Myrrhine (Megan Hooper called her Muffy), Philip, Melissa, and Xanthias. “For beautiful is the farm, but hard is the work, and lazy is the slave.” My favorite part of that class? At the end of the day, you would read to us, in Greek. When you were particularly tired, your southern accent became more pronounced. No one’s classical studies education is complete until they have listened to Attic Greek read with a slight southern drawl.
Not all of our adventures involve me as your student. Do you remember the semester I TA’d for your Human Nature class? You had a waiting list of over twenty students who wanted to take the class, so I volunteered to be your TA. You made sure I got paid for that work, because you never wanted to take advantage, but I would have done it for free, just to attempt to repay the debt I owe to you and to philosophy.
Do you remember the times I guest-lectured for you when you had to miss a class? Probably not, because you weren’t in the classroom, after all, but I certainly appreciated the chance to engage in philosophical discourse. By that time, I was teaching COMP 101, and the best I could do for philosophical content in my own classes was to sneak in some Aristotle and Aquinas as required readings. Stepping into your classroom and talking about Plato or Philo or whomever was a welcome change.
Do you remember when I took Gordie Plague’s seat on the General Education Revision Committee that you also served on? We had finally advanced to the point of writing descriptions for the designators, and Sheila McIntyre and I insisted on using “that” clauses, while you preferred to use “which” clauses. I think we deferred to you in the end, as the committee had much larger issues to address, but it’s one of those little things that I always think about when I’m editing some author who has used a “which” clause in the place of a “that” clause. “Ah,” I say to myself, “Here is a writer after Dr. Curry’s own heart.”
And how many times have you and I met at Maxfield’s for a drink or a bite to eat so we could bitch about the current state of affairs (in the classroom, on the campus at large, in the world in general)? Now that both of us are retired, we won’t be sharing classroom or committee experiences, but we can still get together to bitch about whatever needs bitching about. Because a good friend is one to whom you can say anything about anything. And regardless of where our retirement paths take us, we will remain good friends who can pick up where we left off, and who will create new memories that will make us smile twenty years down the road.