LY #52 Back to the Beginning - My First Big Office!

In my Bendnotes 2, September 22, 1988, I described Deschutes Hall and my first office as well as the Pinckney Center and the man for whom it was named.  Note my early delight in heavy oak furnishings -- a decorative style I no longer love.

      "Bend sits in a curve of the Deschutes River, from the French, Des Chutes, the shoots, I guess, the rapids.  I work in a building called Deschutes.  It is less rippled than the river.

      "Deschutes is a single story building with five classrooms on one side and eight offices, two bathrooms and a sitting space on the other. . . At each end of the hall are double doors, sort of like an air lock.  (In fact, I heard it called the airlock at one point and laughed, though the speaker was being serious, because my head was filled with images from 2001.)  Between the two doors at either end of the hall there is an office. . . . My office has many wall shelves, a large oak desk, a big oaken wild west lawyer type of chair, a chair with a green vinyl seat and wooden arms for visitors to sit in and a wooden coat rack.  It's real nice and I plan to enjoy it, no matter who I kicked out to get it.  From my window I look down (remember, the college is built on the side of a hill) on a picnic table, through several trees, and across the valley to the volcanic tag ends of the Cascades.

     "Life could be worse.  Overall, the campus does look like a community college, not a college.  No ivy wrapped pillars here, or pseudo Greek columns.  The college got its money for buildings from the school district in the mid-sixties and it shows.

Pinckney Center floor plans

      "One of the more interesting buildings is the Pinckney Center for the Arts.  This houses the ceramic and painting studios and the little theatre (where L- the woman who put me up this summer, is the drama department).   The Pinckney is interesting, I think, for two reasons.  First, for its theatre, which is really a big room, not unlike a ballroom with a high ceiling, in which a rolling stand of seats has been placed.  Second, because it was named after Orde Pinckney, the gentleman I am sort of replacing, though I think that it's probably not possible to even imagine replacing this monument.

      "Orde . . . wears string ties with bars of gemstone at the top.  He is an Orator.  He speaks in bell-like pear shaped (okay, okay, mixing of oral and aural metaphors -- so sue me) tones and lectures exquisitely -- I have heard him twice now, because I hold office hours at the same time as his speech class.  He has also taught American government and history.  But his style and mine are, well, think of comparing Helen Hayes and Laurie Anderson, or Lillian Gish and Sandra Bernhard.  (I know, I know.  Those analogies need not be scanned too closely.)He has a beautiful voice, smiles at them, has great stories -- but he is not interactive, not improvisational.  I only hope that I become as fine at my style as he has at his."