I’ve taken a lot of English classes in college where the Professor comes in, goes to the podium, and spreads his notes. He wants them handy, to be sure he covers all his observations and insights going back to the first time he read the book in question that he’s getting ready to lecture about.

This leads me to an account of my discovery in the college library.

I’ve argued for years that every town should have a college, and every college should have a good library.

I think probably most colleges do. At least the ones I’m familiar with, that have their own stories relevant to my life, notably UCR, UCLA, CSULA.

But not all. I remember, with mixed feelings, maybe forty years ago, when I was advisor to the then current senior class and arranged college visitations to help my students choose.

We went to lots of colleges, UCLA, UCR, USC, UCI, Claremont, Occidental. We even went to Pepperdine, that private college with money behind it, right on the Malibu coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

We took our busload of seniors, toured the campus, and after lunch, some went down to the beach.

I went to the library. I have a thing for libraries. I wanted to see what Pepperdine had to offer. It’s one way to determine the kind of education being provided, and would influence my letters of recommendation.

A lovely building, seeming new, with a good view. The feeling of welcome that money can provide. But where are the books?

Shelves with stragglers. Room to grow. But for a college education? Our Pasadena Public Library had more books.

Hell, pardon my French, I myself had more books. I was collecting for a bookstore I always wanted to own, but I was not a library, certainly not a college library.

“We’re expanding our holdings,” they explained.

A real college library has more books than you could ever read. They have the materials for doing research.

I loved to browse the categories. Take Shakespeare, for example. They have all the texts, copies of the Folio and the Quartos. Copies of the anthologies. Copies of each edition of each play by every publisher with every editor’s notes.

Then biographies of the author. And the history of the time. And then the commentaries and criticism. Collections, volumes of consideration of each play. I loved finding who said what, and the controversies, the literary battles, the schools of criticism.

Shelves and shelves, and a range of new shelves for subdivisions, enough to make you dizzy and catch your breath.

And now we come to why I started this discussion.

On the shelves, a copy of the book, written by my Professor, dealing with the play we had read and discussed in class those many long years ago when he was still alive and I was taking the course.

He assigned me the most difficult topic, I wrote the paper, he praised it, we discussed it.

Here in the library was the book he had written. I was curious to know what his final thoughts were, and to see if I was represented in any of them.

I checked out the book and took it home.

Imagine my surprise when I sat down to read and opened the book. It was covered with marginal notes, two shades of ink in the same handwriting as if second thoughts were appended to the first. The handwriting looked familiar. I went to my files, drawers, archives, and fished out my original copy of the essay I had written with the professor’s comments.

The handwriting was the same!

In my hands I held the thoughts of my old professor.

His estate must have transferred his private library to the college library which integrated it into the larger collection.

It was like his notes spread across the podium as he began his lecture.

Here he was again, still teaching, and I was still learning.

I thought of keeping the book, telling the library I lost it and paying for a replacement. That way I could continue our discussions. His teaching would not stop at the grave.

I would still have my teacher, friend, colleague. We could pick up where we left off.

But then, good citizen that I am, I thought that if I returned the book, it would be put back on the shelf, and some student in the future would take it down and learn what I learned. The teaching would go on. I would be a part of it.

Even though I’m retired from the classroom more than twenty years, I hope my own teaching somehow can continue, even after life.

But, rather than re-shelve my notes and hope some student in the future will take me down and read me, I decided that, to get my words “out there,” the blog, this blog, is the way to go.

The chances are better that someone somewhere in the world will find me and read what I say.

So look for me on the blog. I’ve spread my notes and begun my lecture.