Teachers

Floreta over at The Solitary Panda (link in the blogroll) posted a meditation on teachers; she ended by asking about our own transformative teachers. This was the comment I left:

1. John Robert Barth, Jesuit priest, perched atop a lecture hall table in sock feet, reading from Faulkner's Light in August. Political science never had a chance after that.

2. Can't remember his name, but my undergraduate sophomore poli sci seminar leader whose first two assigned books (for poli sci, mind you) were R D Laing's The Politics of Experience and Ram Dass' Remember: Be Here Now. Said grad student had all but abandoned his dissertation to write and recite poetry; I was soon to follow.

3. Bill Wallace, grad student mentor extraordinaire: shaped the therapist I was for 20 years and the teacher I am now.

4. Innumerable clients and students who have taught and inspired me through the years.

5. My wife Tina and my son Walden.

6. Sophie the WonderBullmastiff; Lucia the Neapolitan Mastiff; Thunderheart, the Bighearted and gorgeous red Bullmastiff; Blue the BlueHealing WonderDog.

7. Writers: Grace Paley; Denise Levertov; Campbell McGrath; Charles Olson; Michael Ondaatje; Andre Breton; Mina Loy; Henry Miller; Hoa Nguyen.