The Elms

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "
- the Eagles, Hotel California

I have been spending more time on campus lately because I've been riding the bus the past two weeks. I have not driven my Mazda since we took my car's engine apart and discovered the timing belt needs to be replaced.

The mechanic advised to drive it "as little as possible." The repair is scheduled for Monday, but the odyssey of getting the parts . . . well, it's a tale of triumph and tragedy, heartache and redemption. In short, it's a story for another day. And at this point, we're STILL wondering whether the tale will end happily. My little Mazda: how I miss my WHEELS!

But enough about that. The good news is that we have bus service available about a 3-minute walk from where we live. We're not really that close to town, but bus service makes it possible to live without a car, at least for a little while.

The morning bus drops me off behind the Libraries, and there is nothing more fun on a wintry morning than to have a little stroll around and watch the first light break on campus. It is an inspiring, joyful experience, and I do it every chance I get.

On this particular morning, I took some photos of the mall below the Libraries, looking down from "gown" into "town," as we say around here. A short 5-minute walk away, they are serving up hot breakfasts at the Corner Room. My schedule has not permitted a stop there yet this year, but perhaps it will before the week is out!

Our beautiful campus is famous for its trees. We have some really marvelous trees and they are truly characters. They're very old, and huge; they have tucked a few years under their belts. Oh, the things they've seen!

The mall is lined with elm trees, but over the years, quite a few of the elms have had to be removed due to disease. I am proud to say that as I graduated with my undergrad PSU degree in 1986, our class gift was to purchase some new elms to plant along the mall below Pattee.

So some of the trees - maybe the smaller one on the right, perhaps? or some of those little ones down behind that huge tree on the left? - just might be ones I have helped fund my very own self! Yay! Hooray for trees! (And then there's this: “A society grows great when old men [and women] plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” - Greek Proverb.)

In this photo, you can see a number of the elm trees that line the mall. To the left, the square little maroon building is Old Botany. Schwab is next to it. You can see a bit of Old Main behind them. To the right is Carnegie, and next to it, Willard. Down behind Willard is the duck pond and the alumni gardens.

I was walking on campus on this day feeling happy, as I so often do, and thinking what a gift it has been to get to obtain my undergrad and grad degrees and essentially spend my life/career at Penn State. As one of six children of a railroad brakeman, college was never a possibility for me, financially . . . until I took a scholarship test and won a full-tuition, four-year scholarship that brought me here and set my feet upon this path.

You know, I never had any idea that the work of this place would become my life's work. And that I would be so happy to be doing it, even all these years later! I walk this campus like I own it. I go into buildings I don't need to go into to take pictures of how the light looks inside. I try to make art out of campus architecture. I find the place a neverending source of inspiration. (I know: sickening, right? Yes, I'm happy!)

Switching gears just a bit (but I promise I'll bring these divergent threads back together in a bit) . . . we lost another tremendous music artist again this week. This time it was Glenn Frey, of the Eagles. I have already written on these pages about the Eagles concert that we attended in October of 2010, as part of their Long Road Out of Eden tour.

It was a fantastic show, second in my life experience only to the first time I saw Springsteen and crew for their reunion tour in 2000. The music was better than ever; the sound was perfect; it was gorgeous, just like a recording, but . . . LIVE!

I remember sitting in the darkness of the Bryce Jordan Center for the Eagles concert and hearing the first few licks of Hotel California. Oh, my. It was a Top Life Moment, one I will savor forever. And then they launched into a 3-hour, 30-song set that just blew us all away. The harmonies were outstanding, Joe Walsh was a total madman, and the music was joyful, exuberant, the soundtrack of our lives.

Henley has been quoted as saying that the song Hotel California was about "a journey from innocence to experience." Frey has said that they "wanted to write a song that was sort of like an episode of the twilight zone," featuring a character who, "every time he walks through a door, there's a new version of reality." (The quotes are from Wikipedia.)

Now, how does this all tie together? I remember in the 1980s or 1990s working with a database program that we used to jokingly call Hotel California. You could get into it, but you couldn't get out of it. (You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.)

OK, so maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but in some ways, my own experience on this campus has been a sort of personal Hotel California. There were times along the way that I thought I was leaving; times, in fact, that I was looking for the door. But somehow I found it was a passage back to the place I was before.  :-) 

The song to accompany this posting is an Eagles tune, Hotel California, from 1977, when it was first released. Enjoy!  And thank you, Mr. Frey, for the music. Go well, sir. What a fantastic trip it was.

P.S. The usable bits of the elm trees that have had to be cut down for one reason or another over the years are taken and made into furniture. And so it is that one can own a little piece of Penn State's history and culture by purchasing furniture made from the elms. A portion of the proceeds goes toward planting more trees on campus.