This week, a long-time friend from Colorado State University emailed me with some questions about J-Day, the state conference of the Colorado Student Media Association that bring over a thousand students and advisers together. He was putting together a proposal to have the conference return to CSU in 2027, after two years on the CU-Boulder campus.
I did my best to dig up some old documents (mostly dealing with the costs of using the Lory Student Center for the event) and shared my own practices in organizing the day. I hope J-Day returns to Fort Collins... and still am a bit shocked that the CSMA board changed the location in the first place. My sense is that the board simply wanted to rotate the event every couple years, possibly prompted by a new dean at CU reaching out with their own proposal a couple years ago.
But what really surprised me was that it is "already" five years on from my retirement as executive director, after ten years on the job. That also means I am 15 years on from high school classroom teaching, though I have kept my hand in the game, so to speak, with my college courses.
Time doesn't vary in its pace, if we are being completely objective. But time SEEMS to move more slowly or quickly and my tendency is to just go with the latest deadline or project or necessity and not worry much about the actual time that has passed.
But then come the reminders. Our granddaughter Anna was named the 2025 Eric Benson Scholarship winner a couple weeks ago, which is terrific. Grace earned the same award two years ago. It comes with a one-time $2,000 scholarship, which is a nice amount, even in an age of very high tuition costs.
When I began as CSMA director in 2010, I also inherited administering this scholarship, and the award was $800. Not horrible, but to rise to $2,000 is far more than inflation.
Yesterday, Kathleen and I had our somewhat regular conversation about how we could not believe we were halfway through May. Anna will be graduating in eight days but we retain vivid memories of her as a small child. Our grandsons in Seattle visited this past weekend and the elder is starting to look like a full-grown adult. Eldest grandchild Grace has finished her sophomore year of college and will turn 21 this fall.
We, of course, haven't changed. Ha!
Last night we watched "Nonna," a new movie on Netflix that is based on a real restaurant on Staten Island, where the "hook" was that four grandmothers (really, just women in their early 70s as far as I could tell) did the cooking... "just like cooking for their families."
It was a pleasant couple hours, but I was startled by how rickety and, well, old, the actors played the parts. We met one of them in a home where she was being wheeled to lunch. Another mostly sat in her house, having conversations with her long-dead husband and avoiding the world. You get the idea.
But here's the thing: we are older than those characters were supposed to be. And we aren't all that rickety.
We are more vulnerable, I suppose, to accidents or illness or forgetfulness, but we prefer to remain young and vigorous in our minds, at least.
Reality is not our friend, I suppose.
The good news is that both of us are engaged in new projects that keep us focused and busy. The latest Trumpian outrage still intrudes most days and, yes, the first 100 days of his benighted presidency seemed to last forever.
But 2029, and a new person in charge, is not really that far away.
Here's to getting to there in one piece.
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