So sad

I just received an email from our college president about the death of a colleague: not unexpected, I suppose, since Mark has had a form of leukemia this past year. But I saw him in the hallway during finals week, a month ago, thin as a wraith in thick, baggy sweat pants and his characteristic dark-gray vest. All I managed was a "hey, there" and a smile as he turned towards the men's room.

Wow. He was a smart curmudgeon, the kind of irascible liberal arts guy that I respected and tangled with, alert to his intelligence and commitment to the old-fashioned virtues: self-respect, hard work, purposefulness, excellence, integrity. He thought his students capable of these and certainly exhibited them himself, even as he groused about paperwork and procedures, institutional innovations and the shenanigans of our current late-capitalistic education enterprise.

Mark almost never smiled, yet he seemed approachable and humorous, keeping a hallway bulletin board restocked each semester with historical cartoons and satirical images to show there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to human folly.

I will miss his uncompromising dismissal of stupidity, his unwavering certainty about his own views, his quietly scathing critique, his scowl, him.