i was on the planet fifty-four years before i met kathy forgey and i really regret that...she was my academic advisor on this project and while she was serious about it she made it fun...she gently but relentlessly moved me out of my comfort zone and proved to me that i could survive there and even learn...what more could you ask of an educator and a friend? if i had known her earlier i would have completed a degree by now...she wouldn't have had it any other way and i wouldn't have wanted to disappoint her...the first season of this garden is all but done and the second season is already planned...we kept busy while she was ill and she helped me to keep focused...the only way i can think of to repay that is to pass it on somehow...to give the help she gave me to someone so it can move along and return to her wherever she is...the only way out is through...i will work the garden...it was a promise...but it will never be the same.
11-6-2011
it has been a year since kathy's passing and i still regret the brevity of our friendship...wouldn't trade the friendship for anything...there's a third season and another paper on the garden in the works, so, in that sense at least, kathy is still on campus...and by her telling that's what she wanted...she told me often that she had a fondness for the place...loyalty too...to the university and to her students...this was always as much her project as mine so i will keep my promise to do another four hours of independent study with it...loyalty is transcendent.________________________________________ 11-7-2012 two little years...seems longer...i still miss my friend most days but i have to admit the edge has worn off the loss a bit...life's like that...it goes on and all sorts of stuff happens that demands your attention and distracts you...the garden is still on campus but its focus has shifted from where it started...its not so much about they why of agriculture as the how these days ...the wheat grass from kansas is an experiment in domesticating a perennial with an eye to no-till agriculture if not outright permaculture...so it is still acceptably within the confines of its anthropological roots as far as i can see...the neolithic revolution was about domestication after all...i'm not sure it is a change kathy would have wholly approved of...she would always whack me on the head (figuratively) when she felt i was going off on a tangent ("focus!focus! focus! i'm reigning you in for your own good!" was a common red bullet on drafts she emailed back to me ) and i'm inclined to think the word focus would come into play here as well...i can hear it now as a matter of fact...but i was always trying to make connections and find universals...she was skeptical... she was tolerant too...and she always got me back to where she wanted me to be.
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