As a senior citizen—and I wonder how many folks feel the same— I have lost things, and I have seen things.
In early middle age I used to idly toy with the idea of attending Pepperdine University, in California, so I could take writing classes from David Gerrold—he’s a master! But I ran into David at a convention and he told me he’s not at Pepperdine anymore. I kept my disappointment off my face, for truly I hadn’t lost anything: After all, “toying with an idea” is not even at the level of a true daydream, let alone a plan. As it happens, I did look up Pepperdine on the Web: My, what soft blue chairs those classrooms have.
I have seen the best of the Canadian Armed Forces: a few elite infantry, engineers and artillery—the cannons were airdropped on pallets with parachutes—gathered to become part of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. Part of the mystique was that no one could transfer in straight out of training school. It was strange for me to look around, serving among them, knowing that if Canada needed any forces suddenly deployed anywhere, then “we are it.” It made our training meaningful. What I saw, besides nice pluses, were some awful minuses. Years later I was not truly surprised to learn the regiment had declined to the point of needing to be disbanded after being aggressive “to a fault.”
What I lost, serving among the elite, was a little innocence. As it happens, long before I knew of Pepperdine University, I told a fellow soldier my discerned Purpose of the Airborne Regiment: to raise the morale of the rest of the forces by giving the regular soldiers something to talk about while (As with Pepperdine) “toying with” the idea of transferring in to become paratroopers.
For a time, with youthful ideals, I was a postsecondary mature student. Today, at my old campus there shines a golden wall inscribed with the names of my instructors, now retired. I realize: as I am retired, then of course all of them would be long departed from those hallowed halls. I can’t say I’m disappointed, since I never planned to return to visit them, but still, to realize that my old instructors are, like David Gerrold, all gone… gives me a sense of something lost.
We subsidize student tuition, depending on the decade, at several dollars to one. Tuition keeps rising: partly because the campus “establishment” is becoming less efficient, hiring more administrators and fewer professors. From what I observed back in the day, I am not surprised.
The board of governors of my time were horribly stupid, with false premises, rendering them unteachable. I once wrote an angry essay that I never sent anywhere. Except to my blog. I suppose if all of them have retired, then the new batch of governors wouldn’t have their feelings hurt, so maybe I should mail my essay to them for their edification. Just a thought.
Society encourages enrolment in postsecondary partly so students may graduate into being Good Citizens. As graduates they, in theory, would understand citizenship being vital for a healthy democracy. For my part, wearing my citizen hat, I write concise letters to my member of parliament. I try to be helpful. Not ranting, not rambling, but offering resources I have found. For example, research showing modern homelessness only started because some chickens came home to roost around 1980—which perfectly matches my memory! (Chickens of red tape, ballot propositions, delays, zoning restrictions, cultural nostalgia for white picket fences, and more) Middle aged people have never known a time without many homeless persons: they probably don’t “get it” that homelessness is preventable if they have the guts to chop some chickens.
As a member of “the establishment” I’ve visited my MP and his able assistant. Such fine fellows. Yet I can’t help having a low opinion of their peers in Ottawa. I guess the MP’s tell themselves, like my old paratrooper peers, “We are it… the top leaders of Canada.” Not to me. I think Abraham Lincoln was a great Chief Executive Officer, but the rascals in Ottawa are not the stuff of senior executives. Maybe middle managers. I wouldn’t put one in charge of managing a major corporation’s minor local branch down the road. Maybe they’re good lawyers, good farmers, but not good leaders: merely legislators.
I guess it’s up to me.
In old age, I have kept some youthful ideals, but…
I have lost the warm comfort of believing that somewhere out there are people, older and wiser than I, busy in towers of glass, or ivory, or of parliamentary bricks. Not that I was toying with the idea of consulting them; it raised my morale just to know they existed. Now they don’t.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
reminded that I can get, besides rickets,
sunburn through glass
East of Salmon Arm
British Columbia
June 2024
Footnote: Datelined July 28, 2024, Sam Granville, reporting from Los Angeles for the BBC,
“The US Supreme Court has ruled that cities can ban homeless people from sleeping rough.
It is the most significant decision on homelessness since at least the 1980’s, when many experts say the modern US homeless crises began.”
