There was a time when I was president of the Faculty Union.  I had adopted the Union as my family when my own family was fractured and fragmented.  I needed to take care of people and the union that had been formed in my back yard one summer became the focus of what I just was able and willing to do.  I served as an officer and mostly as the self-appointed editor of the faculty union newsletter. Having no experience to write a newsletter did not deter me. The Union, unaffiliated with any state or local organization, became known for its initials FAMCO.  Although it sounded like a toy manufacturing firm it was actually the Faculty Association of Monmouth College.  Later, when the college became a university it was named FAMU, sort of whale-like, but initials are handy things to have.

My memory about this union and my role in it was jogged when a reader of my essays asked why my daily example had not been received on his e-mail. I am a self-appointed writer of THINKING ALLOWED and just send it out to my list of readers who are e-mail literate. It is curious that I have now come to the point where I am expected to produce that daily example. 

Today there was nothing in the papers that piqued my interest and I had gotten up too late to ride my bike in the hot sun, so I decided not to write.  Then I remembered how I was expected to do something and found a topic.  Carol is great at reminding me that I had been expected to do something or that I had not done something that I promised to do. But this harkened back to when I decided that my former family at FAMCO had been outgrown and needed to be on its own since Carol and I had gotten together.  A new family was starting while the old one should get out of the house, be its own and solve its own problems.

Something kicked off this memory and I think it not only is the expectation of a reader of my essays but the expectation of people in my building for me to do things for them. Being  president of a condominium association, even though it is voluntary, makes the people who live here think I can solve all their problems even though most of them resent having to go to some authority to make things right. Back at Monmouth when it was a college I had been the president and before that the vice-president.  From the beginning I had put out a weekly newsletter telling the story of how the union was forming, developing, encountering problems and news of the college that could not wait for the local newspapers to print. I called the newsletter FACTS FROM FAMCO.  In a later time when the relationship had switched I sent out FACTS for FAMCO to members breathlessly waiting for my diatribes against the feckless and short-memoried new leadership. The little 8 ½ by 11 typed page front and back was soon multiplied through friendship with the college’s mail-room photo offset operator.  I found that cut-and pasting pictures added to the columns and made reading more interesting.  It was a coup when a student came up to tell me that the kids were reading  and enjoying the illustrations in FACTS although this told me that the message was passed over for the “comic” strip. I have just been struck with the fact that I am doing the same thing here in Florida for the Association by sending out monthly “7th Moorings Newsletters”.

What I have been trying to tell is that when I announced that I was no longer involved with the Union as one of its officers there was an adverse reaction from a group of younger faculty. They were facing the relentless attempt by the college administration to reduce costs by refusing to grant tenure.  New faculty now had to wait in some cases over 15 years before they could expect protection of tenure and could buy homes and feel secure at the school. This group approached me on campus and angrily accused me of deserting them.  I cannot tell you how this surprised me.  All of a sudden people who just smiled at me and never entered into conversation with me now denounced me as a traitor.

 I had always thought my helping to create the union was self-interest and the knowledge that I could rely on others to stand side-by-side with me as WE worked together to solve our problems and formed a collective bargaining unit.  These younger people had not been around to participate in the founding of the union and EXPECTED and DEMANDED that someone else do the work they should be doing. Well, so it goes.  You get in the habit of being somebody who enjoys work and then you are expected to continue to do it from that time on.

I read in the paper this morning about Irving Kupcinet who is now over 90 and has been a gossip columnist for over 70 years.  He is in a wheelchair but still gets around and continues to work.  I like that.