The Dock of the Bay

Last week began exceptionally well.  Monday morning found me sitting on the Santa Monica pier, basking in the warm California sunshine and watching the pounding surf break onto the beach beneath.  The combination of warmth, gentle breeze, and rhythmic sounds was blissfully soporific.  There are some moments when life seems perfect, and this was one of them.

I was in Los Angeles for an exhibition and one-day conference at the Getty Museum, and the mere act of getting there makes for quite an experience.  The Getty is perched atop a small mountain, in the heavens both literally and figuratively.  Visitors arrive by car or bus at the bottom of the hill, and then board a monorail shuttle for the ride up to the summit where a vast panorama of futuristic buildings and plazas awaits.  It is quite spectacular … and oh yes, they also have an amazing collection of art, including some remarkable medieval paintings and manuscripts.  Many of these, and much more besides, borrowed from collections across North America and Europe, constituted a special temporary exhibition entitled “Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-1350”, which, remarkably, will be coming to the Art Gallery of Ontario in mid March, its only other venue.  And this exhibition was the subject of the symposium, held in an auditorium replete with comfortable seats and all the latest technological “bells and whistles” …  enough to make an academic weep.  I stand in absolute awe of their purchasing power.

Needless to say, it was a bit of a shock to return mid-week to the “Great White North”, a temperature change of about 40 degrees Celsius in a few short hours, and fortunately I made it back to Ottawa just before air travel was shut down by the massive snowstorm.   I have considerable sympathy for those who weren’t so lucky.  Travel is stressful at the best of times, but to be stranded somewhere by bad weather, with no idea of when or how you will be able to move on, can really mess up your head.

So too can the task that occupied most of my day on Friday.  This year each Dean has been asked to prepare for a probable 3% cut to their Faculty’s base budget, which for FASS amounts to roughly $1.25 million, or the equivalent of about 15 faculty positions.  Not peanuts, and of course this is on top of smaller cuts in each of the last three fiscal years.  The budget document which must be submitted this week requires very specific information: which accounts will be reduced and by how much, and which salary lines will be eliminated.  There are some moments when life seems perfect, and this was most definitely not one of them. 

By Friday night I was more than ready for another “fix” of “sitting on the dock of the bay”.  Sadly, no such luck; but a large glass of Lagavulin was a welcome consolation prize.