I am lucky to be able to walk to work. I do. Everyday.
I walk along a river and through a park. It is beautiful.
Today, when I reached the campus I made a short detour and stopped by the beautiful roses blooming in the gardens of our Teaching and Learning Center. How wonderful is that! A teaching and Learning Center with a garden! It is beautiful.
I recorded the moment. I shared it.
Beautiful morning at the @UWBothell Teaching and Learning Center. pic.twitter.com/wcWPeMhcnl
ā Todd Conaway (@Todd_Conaway) June 12, 2017
What a glorious beginning to the first day of summer here on campus.
Even in all that beauty, I left the garden with an ache that I have had most every time I visit the garden. It is this: The sign for the Teaching and Learning Center is a piece of vinyl strung up mostly strait across the front of a lovely old farm house.
It does not seem like an integral or permanent part of the building. It is an after thought. It reminds me of the level of support I have seen at most teaching and learning centers. It reminds me of lip-service to trends in education. Of an award given reluctantly. That is not beautiful. It does not seem as if it is there permanently. It is a temporary sign.
There is a story in there. Enough said.
I wonder how long that vinyl banner will last.
I love the metaphor you see flapping in the wind. Certainly, the vinyl will not last as long as a ‘real’ sign attached to the building somewhere, a sense of permanence is something less common in this world. The cynics might say willful ignorance is sustainable, but I work against that part of nature. I worked in the sign shop my first year of college – a joyful experience – and signs are not cheap, and getting officialness in this area is highly bureaucratic, so going the vinyl route was probably the easy and less expensive way. Alas, it also projects a message that doesn’t inspire as much hope as what might be etched in marble.
If you spend, “easy and less expensive way” I can tell you what you will get š