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Palm Sunday (Long)



                                           PALM SUNDAY, or,
                                    BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND

[The example of my mentor's brilliance: Using the Socratic method, he asked his
little class this: "What is it that an artist does-a painter, a writer, a
sculptor--?.... If any of us came up with good answers, I now have no idea what
they might have been. His answer was this: "The artist says, 'I can do very
little about the chaos around me, but at least I can reduce to perfect order
this square of canvas, this piece of paper, this chunk of stone.'"]
     --Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday

Spring has sprung and the mud is riz.  Is it a doity boid, singing in the dead
of night, or flower petaler with a loverly pistil to my head that prompts me to
pick up my samurai keyboard for some hackhackhack writing battling the bandits
of boredom and banality in our corner of the global village? No, neither crow
cuss nor crocus, but faithful readers, who, more than my own perseverance, have
kept my honor bright.  Some wrote to me. Some wrote to the list. Let's not
argue the merits of either. All harkened back to my posts from Poland, 1996-97,
or farther back, to my years with the Corps of Engineers, 1993-95: Rusted email
hanging in monumental mockery in the archives of the archives and archivists
listserv.  Wit being among those things subject to envious and calumniating
time, newer members here, where I now so often lurk and so seldom post, ask,
and rightly, Who was this guy?  What's he done fer me lately, this legend in
his own time, or is that own mind?

The answer, to be sure, is not much.  My current job description does not
include time or financial incentive for any creativity or professional activity
beyond a very narrowly circumscribed sphere. I'm writing this at home, having
read daughter Lilly some animal poems by Langston Hughes and tucked her into
bed.  I'll forego the Academy Awards until such time as I have something
nominated.

Maybe there's a movie in the life of Kurt Vonnegut's University of Chicago
anthropology professor, quoted above.  He went on to kill himself.  Vonnegut
does not give his name, saying the man wouldn't want it seen in an essay or
anywhere.  I ought to have asked Sol Tax about it. Can someone enlighten me?  I
like his description of what an artist does. I think that's what an archivist
ought to do, too, box by box, collection by collection, archive by archive.
That nonsense from Syracuse University 21st Century careers site has it all
wrong.  As an S.U. alum, (M.A., Anthropology, 1986) I want to know how that got
up when there's such a good library school there. Or was.

Or maybe there's a movie in the life of 19th Century mathematician Augustus de
Morgan. I might make ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL MIND.  Study this, from his BUDGET OF
PARADOXES:

[---IF I HAD BEFORE ME a fly and an elephant, having never seen more than one
such magnitude of either kind; and if the fly were to endeavor to persuade me
that he was larger than the elephant, I might by possibility be placed in a
difficulty. The apparently little creature might use such arguments about the
effect of distance, and might appeal to such laws of sight and hearing as I, if
unlearned in those things, might be unable wholly to reject. But if there were
a thousand flies, to appearance, about the great creature; and, to a fly,
declaring, each one for himself, that he was bigger than the quadruped; and all
giving different and frequently contradictory reasons; and each one despising
and opposing the reasons of the others-I should feel quite at my ease. I should
certainly say, My little friends, the case of each one of you is destroyed by
the rest.----]

I first read that while in Library School in Madison in 1987. I had ample
reason to reflect on it in Mad City, too, I assure you. Flies buzz on every
corner there: Wiccans and Republicans, Vegans and Evangelists, and protesters
of every stripe heyheyhohoing about what had to get going. Each was so full of
perfect knowledge on how to run the world that I had to wonder what more they
might possibly learn at the university.

I've been reminded of de Morgan's wise words, too, in the anxious six months
just past.  The general climate of this campus and community seems to me less
tolerant of uncertainty and in search of firm rules. With one exception, for
most of the last eleven years, since my lovely Stefi Szesamaniak wrote from
Madison to say why she wasn't going to move out here after all, I had not heard
anyone say "If I didn't believe ______ was true, I wouldn't want to live."
Three people have said that to me just this year, each filling in the blank
differently, each seemingly assured that he or she couldn't be wrong, as if his
or her depth of faith determined the shape of heaven and earth. The three had
this in common: Each was offended by my polite suggestion that similar faith
might not move mountains but clearly could reduce tall buildings to rubble.

Closer than Ground Zero came news from Missoula, MT, last month, that a lesbian
couple, and infant son, had been burnt out of house and home by an arsonist.  I
have little doubt that the arsonist had a deep and true faith.  Authorities
assume that the arson attack was related to the women being part of a lawsuit
against the state.  Gays and lesbians there are seeking state insurance
coverage of same sex partners.  I was pleased to see that a fellow? (No!), um,
...fellatrice? (Definitely not!)... um...female (Yes!) I knew from Beloit
College was at the top of the names versing Montana.  She was not one of the
burnt out lesbians (so to speak) but clearly is in danger and I worry for her.
News of this fire came just as THE LARAMIE PROJECT was playing here on the
Idaho campus, and a sequel MISSOULA PROJECT was easy to imagine.  What little I
could do about that chaos--writing to say "You go, girl" and offering her a
motion detecting outside light fixture--I did.

Two weeks ago, here, in the chaos of an auction of materials relating to the
Ganado Mission, down in Arizona, I was unable to beat the bids on a diary and
photographs written and shot here in the late 1920s. For busying myself helping
daughter Lilly train for a skating meet (She got the gold! Ukrainian genes!) I
learned of the auction too late to organize things with Northern Arizona
University. I did get the architectural plans for the hospital, no longer
extant. These have gone off to NAU.  That was what little I could do there.
The auction of so many artifacts and documents made me ill.  It was not the
Malcolm X collection but the diary and photos might have meant a lot to the
people at Ganado.

Did you know that you can get a child for less than some people will pay for an
old kachina doll?  We are still pursuing Ukrainian adoption number two. That
won't reduce chaos any. It'll just bring it from an orphanage to our house. I
despair of having any time to attempt anything perfect should we get a second
daughter.

Whether or not I have reduced my thoughts to perfection, or what passes for
perfection, in this medium, you may decide for yourselves.

Eleven years ago today, as most of you read this on Monday, 25 March, I went to
work for the University of Idaho, Special Collections. Terry Abraham's shop.
That was a one year gig. I had several years off for good behavior, and then
Chris Flynn pulled me into the Dark Side, Records Management, back in 1998.
Steadily, since October of 2000, I've been with the International Jazz
Collections, again under Terry's supervision.  That will change May first, when
the new director, Lewis Ricci, takes over. Last month we moved the archive to
another building. Before that I worked in an office next to Chris Flynn. I
swear that he was sane when I left him!

Yours, in far from original order,

Michael "Keeping My Laurels Hardy" Tarabulski

Moscow, ID

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