Batchin' It

It's a muggy, overcast Friday morning here. The older two are at school, Parker is watching My Neighbor Totoro on DVD, and I have spent the last hour or so paying bills. In a bit, P and I will go grocery shopping, stop at the bank to deposit a check, and buy a new tube and possibly tires for my bike. Exciting times here in Midland, Michigan.

Suzy is out of town at the Tri-Annual Super Sister Pamper-a-Thon Bonanza. (That name is trademaked, by the way. I get a dime for every time someone uses it.) She's in Breckenridge, Colorado with her three sisters and SIL Amy getting massages, eating good food, making each other laugh really hard, and generally living the carefree single life. They only get together like this every three years or so, so I think it's important that they live it up and enjoy.

Things here have been pretty chill. Yesterday Parker and I took a picnic to the park and she played for an hour and a half. It was our first day above 80 degrees, and it did indeed feel positively summery for sure.

While she played, I pecked out a tribute to Scott Samuelson, one of my former professors from Ricks College. I took a couple of classes from him back in the day. Suzy was even in one of them. Somewhere along the line, Scott and I became friends rather than just teacher and student. He was the one who first introduced me to the National Undergraduate Literature Conference at Weber State in Ogden which was a tremendously formative experience for me as a student and later a teacher. Scott gave me my first real teaching gig after my mission when I needed some internship credits at Idaho State and he let me be his assistant teacher for a poetry class at Ricks. He and I have traded poems, handmade books, meals, and stories for over twenty years now. He is literally one of the best men I've ever met, and now he's retiring from BYUI after 32 years of teaching. His daughter reached out to all of his Facebook friends asking them to write a note or a memory or something that they could put into a book and give him as a gift. This is what I wrote:

"In my basement, I have a box of papers from my freshman and sophomore years at Ricks College. Even though they were a little pretentious and shoddy in places, they are covered with thoughtful, rigorous, compassionate feedback from Scott Samuelson in his looping script.

On a shelf in my living room, I have an elegant ceramic pitcher colored like Idaho desert, all tans, cream, and speckled brown. Scott gave it to us as a wedding present because my wife and I were talking, flirting, and working on projects together in his class years before we ever knew we would marry.

On my office wall at Delta College, I have a large, two-by-three framed print of a crane taking flight. The paper is handmade, the crane image is from a hand carved block, and the poem at the bottom of the image was letterpressed – a painstaking process of setting type letter by letter. Scott gave it to me as a gift when we happened to run into each other on one of the worst, most catastrophic days of my life. He explained that the crane was a symbol of rebirth, of shedding the old and lifting off into the air, clean and free.

In short, I have spent the last two decades of my life receiving gifts from Scott Samuelson. He gave me the gift of his respect and serious attention as a student and writer at a time when I really didn’t warrant it. He has given me prints, handmade books, paintings, poems and other art that have made my world a more lovely, more uplifting place. He gave me his example as a busy full-time teacher and full-time father who managed go back to grad school after a long absence and finish his PhD, showing me all these years later that it can be done and done well. He gave me the example of an involved, invested teacher who, even after decades of expert teaching in the classroom, continued to seek out new methods, new texts, new interests, and new ways of reaching both the class as a whole and the student as an individual. He has given me friendship, compassion, a listening ear, and one of the best examples of what it is to be a good teacher, father, husband, scholar, and man.

Largely because of Scott, I became a college English instructor. I’ve worked full-time for fifteen years now and have taught approximately four thousand students in that time. Any student of mine who has ever been moved or uplifted, usefully instructed or inspired owes a portion of it to Scott. I simply would not be the teacher or person that I am without his influence and friendship. I know I am just one of the many, many students changed and bettered by Scott Samuelson. But for me, there’s only one of him, and I will be grateful forever that he has been and continues to be my teacher and friend. 

Mark Brown
Ricks College, 1992-1994, 1996-1997"

Scott's meant a lot to me, obviously. He may be retiring, but I know that he's going to keep teaching, painting, writing, and working until he literally just can't any more. It's the kind of guy he is. 

On another, entirely less sentimental note, I recently discovered Jill Sobule's song "Jet Pack." It's like a perfect combination for me: Jill's smart, smart-allecky lyrics and wise little girl voice singing a song about one my favorite nerd things of all time, jet packs. Plus, it's kind of a love song, which is great. Enjoy:

Parker's movie is over, so we need to get ready for the day. Groceries to buy, popped tires to replace, you know? I should probably shower and try not to look like a homeless guy. My natural tendency when Suzy is gone is to go into sweatpants mode (you know what I'm talking about), but I'm trying to not look like I've totally given up this time. Just because my reason for living is in another state doesn't mean I should stop bathing.