Amherst, Mass, was a special place for living a peaceful life. On the north side of the town’s two traffic lights was the University. Around the southern speed guardian was the College and the Town Common, which was the heart of the community. The maple tree on the edge of The Commons was costumed each autumn with red and gold leaves placed there, no doubt, by the same fashion designer who created the wardrobe for the court of the King of Siam. In cold December, the foliage was replaced by the white diamonds of Christmas lights. During the holiday season, carolers gathered around the merry maple. On each weekend of every month, the edge of The Commons held an assembly of silent protestors against war.
The east side of the Commons was hemmed by the old bricks and brownstone of the Town Hall with its clock tower, and by the white planks and green shutters of the Lord Jeff, the hotel named after the colonial general who, it was alleged, pacified the area by distributing smallpox infected blankets to the local native Americans.
The College library, named in honor of the town poet who spoke of walls, flanked the south side of the Commons. The remaining buildings around The Commons held shops, including the Amherst Bookstore and the Peter Pan Bus Station, with their small-pane windows, often rimmed with ice. The grave of another poet, the one who spoke of hope and bird feathers, was only a couple blocks away. The house where the author of the Uncle Wiggly stories had lived in the early ‘50’s was near the Town Library with its ancient floors creaking under its own load of poetry and fiction. This was where anyone could find books for entertainment and pleasure. For local history, there were the documents housed on the second floor, protected from the rest of the building by a dark, narrow, oaken staircase.
A true college town also had places to feed the body as well as the mind. The Gaslight was the site for breakfast at any hour, for both faculty and students. Lunch for faculty was offered by The Pub, located among quaint boutiques such as The Dangling Conversation. For special dinners and parties, faculty went to The Rusty Scupper on the edge of town.
Routinely, meals were consumed on campus, at one of the eateries in the Student Union or The Top of the Campus restaurant crowning this structure, which also housed the university’s hotel where students could earn a degree in hotel and entertainment management.
However, on a daily basis, I usually went with the other deans to dine at the Faculty Club hidden in another historic site in the middle of the campus. When Karen was a graduate student in her Speech and Communications Program, she found that the café in the basement of the Newman Center was a relatively quiet place to study with a cup of coffee.
My first office on campus was located in another ancient brick and granite building, Munson Hall, near the central administration offices found in Whitmore Hall. During my second year at UMA, the Graduate Research Center was opened, and my quarters moved into the multistoried tower designated for the sciences and the newly created program in Computer Studies. I now had a five-minute commute, with Karen dropping me off in the morning or picking me up in the evening. This new location had only one significant problem. It was close enough to our house that I could, too easily, go back to the office in the evening or on weekends. On the other hand, it was also the place for me to find my “alone time.”
Originally, one of the second-floor rooms of our colonial style home was to have been my study. However, Ken and Chris, who had always shared a bedroom, now were at an argumentative age that required separate spaces for a relatively peaceful coexistence. The result was that my study was moved to one end of our large living room. My campus office was the only place I could find for my own personal needs for quietness. It was, also, where I resumed the practice of my journaling. Officially, the workday ended at 5:00 p.m. However, Karen would pick me up at six o’clock, giving me an hour alone, to meditate and to write in my diary.
I have found, in re-reading those pages, which I transferred many years ago to an electronic version, that I had a deep need to be alone with my thoughts, ones that became highly personal, about my married life and our family lives. Those entries do not serve as a source for these current reflections, but rather remind me of the difference of being “alone” and of being “lonely.” They also give a detailed, but boring, account of academic politics in which I came to realize that administrative differences are more deadly within the university than within the bureaucracies of the federal government. A college town may be the place for a peaceful life, but the same is not true for the college, itself.