I Had No Idea: Essay Two

As I have further studied Reed's natural history, I begin to run across names of colleagues with whom I taught in the 1980s. They are either retired or deceased at this point, but their names are everywhere on campus. For example, I learned today, while making a list of trees unique to Reed, that Reed may have the only Kalopanax septemlobus (formely called K. pictus), popularly known as the Castor Aralia, in Oregon. (It actually is native to my native state--Connecticut). The Reed College Kalopanax is located in the Canyon behind the Chemistry building. But what arrested me as I made this discovery, was that it was planted by my former colleague, now emeritus biology professor Bertram G. Brehm. Bert and I got to know each other when I started teaching at Reed in 1982. He was a close friend of Dick Tron, a professor of classics, whose office was next to mine. Often when Bert "stopped by" to see Dick, he wouldn't be around, and so we amiably exchanged greetings. He has a Ph. D. from the University of Texas, and I could just hear a bit of Texas twang in him, even though Southern accents on professors or students were definitely not "cool" at Reed at the time.* I also got to

[*In one of my autobiographies I spoke about some of the prejudices, as well as the academic excellence, of Reed. You had to have the right "accent" if you were to be accepted by the community. That is, if you had a thick French or German or even English accent, you would be welcomed. If you had a Southern or strongly flat Midwestern accent, forget it. A Chicago accent was marginally acceptable, because people thought that you must have gone to the University of Chicago. A Boston accent was always acceptable, but a Rhode Island harshness or Brooklyn accent would have been verboten. They could find no fault in me for my perfect "accentless" speech (I am from Connecticut); they easily could find fault with me for other reasons...]

know Bert's wife Dorothy because she was an instructor at Portland Community College, whose board I served on from 1985-90. In fact, I got to know Bert better through Dorothy; we ended up talking more about community college affairs than of Reed College issues when we were together.

Back now to the tree Bert planted, the Castor Aralia. This was sent to Reed from the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard in 1972, when the Arnold commemorated its 100th anniversary by sending exemplars of this plant to select universities and arboreta around America. Bert was able to get one for Reed, and so he planted it. I also know that he planted some sweet gum trees near the entrance to the campus, as well as many others.

On Memory and Blindness

After reading about Bert's contribution, I happened to find his name online along with another former colleague of mine, the late Professor David French of the anthropology department. Both of them are credited with introducing dozens of species of plants and trees to Oregon. Then, when studying up on the Reed Canyon a bit more, I recognized the names of several other former colleagues, biology and chemistry professors primarily, who had done much to mine the history and characteristics of the canyon. Then, it dawned on me. I was there for six years studying and teaching the history of religion, and I HAD NO IDEA that these colleagues were doing this kind of work. Or, to state it differently, if I knew of what they were up to, I was ignorant of what drove them, what they loved, how the natural world affected them deeply, how they saw themselves as teachers, scholars, humans.

I had the same experience also a few months ago when I wanted to understand something of the history of the Nobel Prizes in physics. My mother knows one of the past prize winners, and I wanted to "read up" on him. But then, as is usual with me, I had to try to understand something more about theoretical physics, and I discovered that the leading author who clearly explains the nature of theoretical physics to undergraduate students was also a former colleague of mine at Reed. And, when I was there teaching, I HAD NO IDEA that this was the case.

Well, these things all tended to "hit" me this morning as I was compiling a list of as many genera and species of trees growing in Oregon as I could (why anyone would do that is a question that I won't answer now!). It hit me that I had lived at a place for six years, among a community of scholars and teachers who really were not only a distinguished lot in those days but whose work has helped explain so much about the natural world, and I HAD NO IDEA about what was around me. I was fully immersed in my classical and biblical texts, trying to write some articles and think about publishing a book, trying to make it in the political world of Oregon, that I was completely oblivious of what was easily available to me right before my eyes.

This thought overwhelmed me today, and I sat and stared and didn't work for many minutes. It overwhelmed me because I saw my life, the decade of my thirties, now in a new way. I used to think my thirties was the time when I was exploring loads of options in life, using my prominent perch as a professor of religion & humanities to teach, preach, join boards, write, begin to raise a family, and appreciate the up-and-coming city of Portland, Oregon. But now, because of the experience of finding the names of several former colleagues closely associated with things I wish I knew now, I see that decade differently. Now I see it as my "blind" decade or, to be more charitable towards myself, my "decade of unawareness." I just didn't know all that they were doing. My conception of life, as I look at it from the perspective of 2007, was so incredibly constricted. It found an interest only in things in the field of religion. I was full of energy to connect with people on that subject, but I was woefully ignorant of. so many areas of life, including the lives of people.

Conclusion--Living in 2007

Someone once told me that when he got to be 80, he finally thought he was ready to be married. He finally had learned enough about himself, about women, about aspects of life to make a happy life, that he finally felt "ready" to marry. But the impulse to marry comes to us far before many of us are "ready." So it is, I am learning, with knowledge. Universities, in general, are wasted on undergraduates. They know nothing of the buildings they inhabit, the trees under whose shade they walk, the plants around campus, the traditions and history of the place.

But the final thought is that life, in general, may be "wasted" on us. We often are put in places where we could really flourish but we are unaware of the gifts right before us. We don't notice things because of our own headlong pursuits, of our own blindness, of our own passions and prejudices which keep things from us. It may sound trite, or may be a truism, but the best way to feel as if we are not passing through life unawares is to stop, smell, taste, talk, feel, think, write and love. I think we don't do much of this because of the pressure of another four-letter word--work. But there is a time for work, and a time to notice life. I hope that I have very few more experiences of "I HAD NO IDEA" and more of "Yes, I recognize that, and isn't it beautiful..?"

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