He has been teaching for fifty years. He wears the same clothes everyday, he gets his hair cut seasonally (head and face), he does not have email, and he has a rotary phone in his office at Sarah Lawrence. And he once referred to a word processor as a "computer machine." And he told us a story about how he went into Radio Shack here in New York the other day and asked for a transistor radio—and the girl working there had no idea what he was talking about.
But he has a true understanding of the classical world—it makes you despair to think of everything he knows that you will never know.
Oh dear, I'm starting my day badly: First I almost cried when a photographer friend sent me a pic of a stark, forbidding building he'd taken, and now this handwritten letter got me all teary. Perhaps another cup of tea before I start working is in order.
ReplyDeleteAw... one of those emotional days, I know them well.
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