losing mentors
I received an unhappy piece of information yesterday. I learned over a year after it happened that Fred Pfeil, one of the most significant mentors in my life, died about two months before my brother.
It really only hit me today just how painfully sad I am about that. He was a terrible correspondent, and I hadn't heard from him in ages. I was hoping/expecting that I would run into him again now that I'm back on campus here, because he would occasionally visit his old OSU stomping grounds. But I guess I won't.
What dawned on me today is that if I had to pick two people who have exerted the most influence on the development of my thinking, it would be him and my brother. It's funny, because I'm fairly sure they wouldn't have seen eye-to-eye on anything, at least in terms of political philosophy. Fred was a bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool, neo-Marxist lefty-lefty. David tended to lean much more libertarian. That said, Fred was the most respectfully open-minded listener I've ever known, capable of treating people with whom he fundamentally disagreed with amazing amounts of sympathy and profound respect. David had to work hard on his tolerance.
I had only one class from Fred when I was a brand new graduate student in 1992. I was embarking on my study of white women who practiced a 'Native American' spirituality, and he was a visiting scholar at OSU, starting his research on the Robert Bly/Iron John "men's movement" that would go into his book "White Guys." I was in a seminar class he taught with only two other students. He used some of my research in his book: "I am indebted to Mary Nolan-Smith... for many fruitful discussions on the politics of New Age tribalism in the spring of 1992," his footnote reads at the end of the chapter titled "Guerrillas in the Mist: Wild Guys and New Age Tribes."
One of my favorite Fred Pfeil moments is when he and I were walking toward the MU on campus one day after class. He was a bit nervous, because he had agreed to give a presentation in the Feminist Theory class in the Women's Studies program. Knowing that I was a 'cultural insider' with my minor in that field, he asked me how he should approach 'them', as if he were asking me about some strange and exotic tribe. I said, "I don't know, Fred... I wouldn't worry about it. I doubt they'll castrate you," to which he laughed and thanked me for pointing out how silly he was being. I had several friends in that class, and they reported that he walked out of there after his presentation with every single last one of them, to a woman, lesbians included, madly crushing on him. He could have slept with them all.
He wrote one of the letters of recommendation that got me into SMU. I should contact them to see if they still have it on file.
I'm feeling a little washed up on the shores right now.
It really only hit me today just how painfully sad I am about that. He was a terrible correspondent, and I hadn't heard from him in ages. I was hoping/expecting that I would run into him again now that I'm back on campus here, because he would occasionally visit his old OSU stomping grounds. But I guess I won't.
What dawned on me today is that if I had to pick two people who have exerted the most influence on the development of my thinking, it would be him and my brother. It's funny, because I'm fairly sure they wouldn't have seen eye-to-eye on anything, at least in terms of political philosophy. Fred was a bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool, neo-Marxist lefty-lefty. David tended to lean much more libertarian. That said, Fred was the most respectfully open-minded listener I've ever known, capable of treating people with whom he fundamentally disagreed with amazing amounts of sympathy and profound respect. David had to work hard on his tolerance.
I had only one class from Fred when I was a brand new graduate student in 1992. I was embarking on my study of white women who practiced a 'Native American' spirituality, and he was a visiting scholar at OSU, starting his research on the Robert Bly/Iron John "men's movement" that would go into his book "White Guys." I was in a seminar class he taught with only two other students. He used some of my research in his book: "I am indebted to Mary Nolan-Smith... for many fruitful discussions on the politics of New Age tribalism in the spring of 1992," his footnote reads at the end of the chapter titled "Guerrillas in the Mist: Wild Guys and New Age Tribes."
One of my favorite Fred Pfeil moments is when he and I were walking toward the MU on campus one day after class. He was a bit nervous, because he had agreed to give a presentation in the Feminist Theory class in the Women's Studies program. Knowing that I was a 'cultural insider' with my minor in that field, he asked me how he should approach 'them', as if he were asking me about some strange and exotic tribe. I said, "I don't know, Fred... I wouldn't worry about it. I doubt they'll castrate you," to which he laughed and thanked me for pointing out how silly he was being. I had several friends in that class, and they reported that he walked out of there after his presentation with every single last one of them, to a woman, lesbians included, madly crushing on him. He could have slept with them all.
He wrote one of the letters of recommendation that got me into SMU. I should contact them to see if they still have it on file.
I'm feeling a little washed up on the shores right now.