Category: Op-Ed

Op-Ed

How I Lost My Job of 15 Years, 2024

I have been working at Pellissippi State Community College since 2008 as a tutor. With a year off when we shut down for Covid, I have been working there for 15 years. I tutor all levels of math, including statistics; physics; statics; some parts of chemistry; and Spanish and French. Since Pellissippi is a feeder school for the four-year colleges, the math Pellissippi offers includes Calculus III and Differential Equations.

Although I worked the summer of 2023, I was not given any hours the summer of 2024. I didn’t think too much of that because in the summer there are fewer students, thus fewer tutoring hours, thus fewer tutors. Besides, a friend had died in April and I was spending a huge amount of time helping to settle his estate. So I thought that I would just use the summer time off to work on his estate and on my garden and then resume work in the fall.

School was to start on 21 August 2024, but week after week over the summer I was not sent a draft tutoring schedule. Finally, on Wednesday, July 31, I was sent an E-mail message from my boss, X,  that said, “If you are receiving this E-mail, you have not been chosen to work this fall”, which meant that I would not be offered a contract for the Fall 2024 semester. I thought that that wording was pretty cold to send to a longtime employee. The message also said, however, that she would like to keep me and the other two recipients of the message in mind as substitute tutors and might offer us a substitute tutoring contract. This latter statement was what the message I had received about tutoring in the summer also said, but when I pointed out to my boss that I had not been sent a substitute contract (from Human Resources), she just thanked me for the information. I never was sent a substitute contract for the summer and so I do not expect one for the fall either. It should be noted that Pellissippi uses the contract system to guarantee that part-time employees such as tutors and adjuncts won’t have any claim to continued employment; one is given a contract for only a semester at a time. (Part-timers also have no benefits or paid time off.) So a failure to offer a contract to a longtime part-time employee is in effect a firing.

I was stunned and bewildered. Why, I wondered, would X not want to rehire a senior tutor who could handle so many different subjects? Whose attendance record was sterling? Who had been there for so many years? I sent her an E-mail message asking why I was not being rehired. She replied with an offer to meet with her to discuss it. We set a date and time for the meeting: August 7 at 3:00 pm.

On Thursday, August 1, I called up Pellissippi’s Human Resources Department and asked the HR person who answered if, in the event that my boss did not give me a satisfactory answer, I could get HR to find out for me the (real) reason that I was not rehired. The rep assured me that this was possible and that she would ask the head HR person, Y, to call me, probably in the next day or two. Y did not call me.

From  July 31 to August 7 I brooded about the reasons for my being dismissed. Was it my age, 74? Was there some severe contraction of the funds allocated to the tutoring center, so that X had had to let even senior people go and she had judged that I was expendable? Had I done or said something that violated some law or regulation or school policy? Etc.

But I could not spare too much time to brood. On Sunday, August 4, I had to take my husband to the Emergency Room because of a racing heartbeat; as a result, the heart catheterization that had been scheduled for him on August 20 was moved to Thursday, August 8. A followup mammogram I had on Monday, August 5, resulted in the scheduling of a breast biopsy for me, also on Thursday, August 8. So because of late-arising medical needs, I was to have the meeting with X the day before two major medical stressors.

When I arrived for the meeting, my boss’s deputy, Z, who sits just outside the boss’s office, greeted me. We had a friendly interaction; e.g., I asked about her son and grandchild. Then Z told me that although X was in, I would have to wait to speak to her until the head of Human Resources, Y, got there. I was startled that Y even knew of this meeting, so I asked Z how it was that Y was coming. Z was evasive, saying that “people just like to sit in”, or some such. I realized that X must have called Y about the meeting.

When Y arrived, she and I entered X’s office together and Y and I introduced ourselves and shook hands. Then X asked me what I wanted to talk about. I was nonplussed, since I had made that clear in my E-mail message to her and she had in effect called this meeting. But I said, “Well, I want to know why my contract is not being renewed.”

X looked at me with a little smile on her face and replied that it was because I was “not a team player” and thus not someone she wanted on her (tutoring) team. I asked why she said that. She replied that it was because of several things “over the years”. I pressed her to specify what they were. She said that she “didn’t have a list” of things and was not going to come up with one. Y chipped in at this point, saying that “we are not going to do that (go through a list) here” and that X did not have to specify anything in firing me. I said to Y that I was a believer that “the devil is in the details” (i.e., the details make a difference in the interpretation) and so I needed to know the reason(s).

Then X did offer one example: she said that I had had an “outburst” the previous spring semester. Specifically, she said that I had loudly berated (my word) another tutor, A, in the presence of various students. I said that I would not call that an outburst, but she insisted that it was. She reminded me that I had spoken to her right afterward as she sat at the front desk and that I had commented to her that she would not agree with me about the point that I had made with my fellow tutor A, which at that time I specified to her. I maintained to X and Y that the point I was making to A was correct.

X did not specify the nature of what I had said to A. So for the benefit of HR’s Y, who seemed to have no idea what the whole thing was about, I explained that the incident occurred at a time when I had no students (and I think there was another tutor also without students). Meanwhile, students were clustering around A and were mostly just sitting there doing their homework, calling on A as needed to help them. In fact, I said, when I went to speak to A, I started by counting aloud the number of people sitting at his table and the nearby tables just feet from him; there were, if memory serves, eleven or more. I pointed out to him (for about the third time since I had known him) that we were supposed to spool off students and send them to other tutors if we had students that we were already helping and the other tutors had none. I also pointed out that the crowd of clustered students could get noisy. After I had spoken to A (who had not replied to my remonstrance of him), I went over to the front desk and spoke to our boss. I did indeed say that she would probably not agree with me, this being based on another conversation we had had years ago about another student-collecting tutor. I expanded on this too for the benefit of Y.

I explained that we tutors were supposed to help students who were working online at the school computers around the periphery of the room, which meant getting up from our seats and going over to sit or stand by such students to look at their screens and answer questions. I said that in the several years pre-Covid, there was a math and physics tutor, B, who refused to get up and help the students on the periphery, which meant that we other tutors always had to go and do it. Furthermore, all the students taking the higher math like Calculus III would sit at his table, mostly not being helped but rather just doing their homework; generally his table was full. This meant that other students needing help were reluctant to walk up to the packed table and ask for help even when B was not actively tutoring (I gave a specific example when that had happened). So he was basically hogging all the higher math and physics students who would park themselves at his table with their classmates, leaving the lower math kids for the rest of us, and he did not have to spend much time helping “his” students because they were mostly just doing their own work. Thus his level of effort was also lower than that of the other tutors.

At some point, another long table was butted against the short end of his long table, in order to allow more of them to sit with him. Eventually our best math and physics tutor, the late Jack Heck, started sitting at the second table too. B and Jack would chat when they weren’t tutoring, which was a lot of the time. Jack had a booming voice, so it could get noisy. A little later, a third table was butted up against the first two and yet another tutor, C, sat there. The three tutors – B, C, and Jack – would chat with one another quite a bit.

So back then I went to my boss X and explained why I thought the collection situation was bad for tutoring: it was not fair to the other tutors, it was hard for students not already in the cluster to gain access to the collector tutor when the other tutors were busy and he wasn’t, and the agglomeration of students and tutors produced a much higher level of noise in the room. X replied to me that clearly the students liked B and so she was not going to change anything.

Returning now to my account of my firing meeting, having explained most of this to Y, I noted that I referred to B’s table (and the extended tables when Jack and C sat there) as “The Boys’ Table” because the great majority of those who sat there, and chatted there, were male. I noted that later I called A’s table the same thing, for the same reason.

I also explained to HR’s Y that my experience with B was why I told X at the front desk after my remonstrating with A that I thought that X wouldn’t agree with me about A’s collecting students: it was because of what X had said about the same case back in the B days. I said that I still thought that allowing clustering was a bad idea and not in the best interest of the students in general, even though those clustered around A liked it that way. I did state that I thought A was otherwise a good tutor.

With regard to my remonstrating with A, X said that afterward “students” (plural) had come to her and told her that my remarks to A had made them “uncomfortable”. I did not believe her for a minute, although I did not say so to her and Y. I also said that A seemed to be on his laptop when he was not actively helping students, which seemed to be a lot of the time; X countered that he was “monitoring the online tutoring line for whoever needed help”. Sure, I replied, but inwardly I noted to myself that his body language (just looking at the screen and not typing much) didn’t seem to support the idea of his doing a lot of online tutoring.

In response to my pressing for further specifics, X offered two more examples. The first was, she said, that I had once told X I didn’t like her hair color. I protested that that was not what I had said in that instance; rather, I just said that I preferred her old color.

The third example X offered was regarding an occurrence a year or two(?) earlier. As I explained ro HR’s Y, I had been standing at the front desk talking with two other staff members. One of them asked about the two student front desk workers, who were not present: which student was C and which was D? The other person present responded that C was the one with children, etc., but the asker was still confused. I then said that D “was the one with the body”. All three of us laughed – D was widely known for having a nice figure and wearing clothes well and so my description made it completely clear which was which.

Shortly after this, X called me into her office and said that a student had approached her and told her that she (the student) had overheard this conversation and that it had made her “uncomfortable”. X prefaced her discussion with me by saying, “It’s nothing, but….” Then she said that the concerned student told her that she, the student, had “body issues” and that that was why it made her uncomfortable to hear someone refer to some other girl’s body. At the end of this conversation, X again said that this was “nothing” and she was telling me about it for my information. However, she brought this up at the firing meeting as though it should count against me.

As I mentioned above, during the firing meeting, X said several times that we were not going to go into the specifics of why she regarded me as not a team player. Y backed her up on that and said a couple of times that X “had the ability” to fire me at will. The second time she said it, I corrected her and said that X had “the power” to fire me, to underscore my feeling that this was very personal. Y also said that the meeting was a “courtesy” to me because of my many years of service, implying that I was not owed any explanation at all. X agreed with that. Near the end of the meeting, Y repeated this statement, X chimed in, and they both said, “Thank you for your service.” I was livid at their using that phrase in this context, but I didn’t say anything about it.

I asked X what she was going to tell people about my firing. She replied that she was not going to mention it at all to my fellow tutors. Y said that they would not tell anybody else anything that would prevent me from getting a job somewhere else. I told X that I insisted that if any of my fellow tutors asked, she should tell them the truth: that I was in fact fired. She did not indicate either agreement or disagreement as far as I could tell.

After all of this, I could see that there was nothing more to talk about. I said so to X and Y and I took my leave. On the way out, the deputy Z rose from her desk and walked me across the tutoring room to the outer door. I was so incensed at X’s firing me for what I felt was no true justification that I remarked to Z that I did not give people the finger, “but if I did……” (I.e., I would give it to X and Y if I did that sort of thing.) I added that all this was unfair. Z didn’t say anything that I could hear, but she murmured something that I took to be comforting.

So that’s that. My job of so many years is gone. It was exasperating to work there at times, but mostly it was very rewarding to help the kids and encourage them. It was also fun to get to do calculus and physics problems and to speak Spanish. Now I am cut off from all that. I hope to get another tutoring job, but it won’t be at all the same, especially since any other job I am likely to get won’t involve calculus and physics and Spanish, just simple math and science.

I offer some comments about my experience. First, I do not believe for one minute that I was truly “not a team player”. Tutoring is not really a team effort; mostly it is a one-on-one activity, tutor and student. My focus has always been on helping students to learn to work problems (or master the grammar) and to understand why the solution (or the grammar) is correct. A student’s subsequent good grade on a test is a victory for us tutors too. This is truly a creative endeavor in that sense. The team aspect comes in only as we interact with other tutors and our boss, for the most part. Two of X’s three examples were completely petty and irrelevant, so only her first example, my criticism of A for collecting students, would apply. However, here I arguably had in mind (1) the best interests of the students and (2) the unfairness to the other tutors of having many students collected around one tutor while others sat idle, sometimes for an hour or more. So I think that my making an objection was in fact more in line with being a team player (and objecting to another tutor’s not being a team player) than not saying anything at all. I concede that it might have been better, albeit useless, to have spoken with X instead of A.

X’s apparently not even compiling a written list of her grievances against me seemed to me to be very telling. If a boss writes up an employee who has trangressed, the writeup goes right into the employee’s personnel file. So X should have been able to pull my file and read from it. But apparently X had not written up my alleged transgressions and thus did not have a written record of them. She seemed to be pulling things somewhat randomly from memory – and it showed.

Second, the reader should note that in not one of the three instances did X make any objection, at the time of the instance, to what I had said. In the case of the hair color, she gave no sign at the time that she was offended, but she apparently stored it up as a black mark against me. Similarly, in the case of the overly sensitive student, X appeared to recognize how ridiculous it was  that the student thought that the whole world owed it to her to be careful what they said around her even though she wasn’t part of the conversation and even though they had no idea that she had this area of sensitivity. X said that it was “nothing”, i.e., was not against me, but then she acted as thought it were. What sort of justice is that?

In the case of my remarks to A about collecting students, I agree that I raised my voice somewhat  in speaking to A, but even so I was not yelling; there was no possibility that I would have strained my voice and I don’t think that people at the other end of the room could make out what I was saying.  I didn’t call A names, nor did I criticize him as a tutor in any way but in collecting. I think that the reason that A did not say anything in response when I spoke to him was because he really had no defense. In fact, when we had had this conversation the previous semester, he had been at least somewhat conciliatory and contrite then.

It is notable that when X and I spoke at the front desk immediately after my remarks to A, she did not upbraid me or remonstrate with me in any way – she didn’t seem to be irritated or distressed. She did not bring up any policy that applied. She basically said very little and it seemed neutral to me. She also did not say that I should apologize to A or talk to him further. In total, she didn’t seem to care much that I had said anything at all.

Third, I did not point out to X or Y that years ago, B always got a lot of hours, unlike most of the rest of us; to me, he seemed to be treated specially. This is a pattern that seems to have continued: some new math tutor (but not all) arrives and gets a lot of hours, while the rest of us make do with less. I can think of three times that this has occurred. I always just put up with it and never spoke of it to my boss because I was being a good soldier, I guess. The list below shows my work hours; I have misplaced my 2011-2014 planners, but the record I was able to compile should be illustrative. During the 2009-2010 school years, I worked additional hours as an adjunct in the (separate) remedial math program. I did not work for a year (as most of us didn’t) because of Covid; some people got to work as online tutors, but I didn’t. Again, we always worked fewer hours during the summer semester because there were fewer students. X took over as our boss in late 2015 or early 2016.

                                   Hours per Week                                                    Hours per Week

        Year         Spring      Summer        Fall                 Year         Spring      Summer        Fall

        2008             —                —                6                   2019             9                3                6

        2009            18               9               10                  2020             6           (Covid)      (Covid)

        2010            12              9.5              12                  2021        (Covid)      (Covid)           7

        2015             9                6               14                  2022             9                —                9

        2016            15              15              13                  2023             9                9                9

        2017            12              12               9                   2024             6                —                —

        2018             9                6                9

Years ago I had a following of students who came to me preferentially when I was on shift. However, the fewer hours I had, the fewer students there were who asked for me specifically. This stands to reason. Most students are at Pelllissippi for two years or less, so new students appear each semester and do not know one tutor from the other. Once they start in the tutoring center, they tend to go to the tutor who helped them last time (the familiarity factor) and so the tutors with fewer hours get less of an opportunity to help many students. The collecting phenomenon also makes it difficult to get to help the new students: many students like to sit with the other students in their class, so they cluster at the table where one or two of their number are already sitting. This is the peer group factor, which I think is huge in precipitating collecting. Realistically, I thought, we should have been encouraging students to stay in small groups, not the larger chatty-noisy groups.

In the old days (before about 2015), we tutors stood around the periphery of the room and moved forward to help when a student raised his or her hand. This was pretty boring for us and was hard on the feet. When we started sitting at a fixed place at a table (not assigned, but chosen by the tutor each shift based on what seating was available), the students began to sit at our tables or at a nearby one if they needed help. This had several advantages. For me, when I was not busy helping a student, I could work problems in, say, Caculus III or Differential Equations or Statics to keep up my skills. I started that practice, actually, and it eventually became part of the rules. However, only one other tutor that I knew of actually did that; most of the tutors read a book or worked on a crossword or passed time on their laptops when they were free. (Not that I actually objected to their doing so.) Sitting at a table most of the time was helpful to me because since I am physically handicapped, it saved me a lot of physical pain not to have to stand or walk around too much. It also enabled me to be positioned to see each student as he or she came in and overhear any directions by the people at the front desk. I was friendly with the beloved staff receptionist, but sometimes she would forget about me, directing students to math tutors who already had a couple of students or telling them that we didn’t have anybody there at the moment who could tutor Spanish. I could point out that I was present and available – and I often had to. Finally, I get cold if I sit in a draft, so I liked to sit at the least drafty table.

But sitting parked at a table also really feeds into the collecting phenomenon. As I noted above, B did not move his carcass to help the students working on the school computers around the periphery of the room. A seldom did so either. It was something of a hardship for me to help the periphery kids because of my vision: as an older person, I had bifocals, so sitting at the computer  and bending my head up to look at the screen through the bottom part of my glasses made my neck ache. I most often just stood by the student so that I could look down at the screen. (Not only that, but my purse, calculator, folder of problems, etc., were back at my table and so when I faced the screen, my back was turned and I feared something might be stolen. We didn’t have lockers or cubbies.) So I viewed it as unfair that we non-collecting tutors had to cover all the peripheral computers. In fairness, I will say that one recent tutor (not A) with collection tendencies is active in moving around the room as needed to help people.

Fourth, as I noted, X said during the firing meeting that multiple students who witnessed my remonstrating with A came to her and reported that they felt uncomfortable. When I have told my friends this, two of them started to snort even before I had finished the sentence. They felt, as I do, that kids don’t behave that way. Well, some snowflake or tattletale type might, but a group of them? Who were nearly all male? That’s incredible. What I think must have happened was that X went over to them and asked them if it made them feel uncomfortable. When a grownup asks a question and the grownup signals what the correct answer is (e.g., “Didn’t that make you feel uncomfortable?”), kids tend to agree, even if only by looking down at their shoes and nodding once or twice. So I simply can’t believe that more than one of the kids, if even one, actually sought her out on their own initiative and reported discomfort.

Fifth, it was at X’s suggestion that we had the firing meeting, instead of her simply replying to my E-mail with an explanation. The advantage, for management, of having a meeting is that all information can be imparted orally, with no written paper trail except as management might document it. So X and Y have complete deniability as to what I claim was said and they can back each other up. They might even have recorded the meeting without my knowledge. I have nothing but my good name and my reputation as a straight shooter to back up what I said and what I am telling the reader now. This is so unfair, especially since Y did not seem to be a neutral observer but instead was constantly reinforcing X. Neither X nor Y indicated that there was any sort of potential for appeal. Thus my continuing in my longterm job was really in the hands of only one person: X.

Sixth, as I noted above, X maintained a little smile on her face during nearly the entire firing meeting. It was….superior, contemptuous, sneering, or so it seemed to me. I would think that if you were discussing with a person why you were firing her, you would wear a serious expression, as though you were speaking more in sorrow than in anger. As I thought about it later, I realized that the impression X left on me was that she was enjoying herself as she spoke. That was a sobering thought. I think that that was why I said to Y that X had “the power” to fire me when Y used the term “the ability”: I really felt the force of X’s antipathy to me and her apparent satisfaction in being able to communicate it to me.

Seventh, like most older people I am sensitive regarding any suggestion that I am too old to work any more. However, I usually do not think that that has anything to do with how I am treated at my job. The only reason that it occurred to me that this might have been a consideration in firing me was because one of the other addressees in my firing E-mail message from X is a coworker whom I have known for years; she worked at the tutoring center for a long time and is, I think, a little older than I am. She tutors writing (English) and Spanish. In addition, she was willing to tutor at multiple campuses, even though that is inconvenient for anybody. Why on earth was she let go? (The third person is, I think, in her thirties and tutors writing.) So there might be some thought that in order to give jobs to younger people, older people should be let go. If that is the case, however, it should be stated explicitly. After all, if we part-timers are at-will employees and our contracts have expired and our boss chooses not to have us back, then Pellissippi should be willing to state what the reason is and not gin up nonsense about not being a team player after 15 years. But now having said that rhetorically, I truly do think that the real reason I was fired was that X just didn’t want me around any more.

In conclusion, while the stated reason for my firing was that I was not the team player that X wanted me to be, I think that the real reason was that I was insufficiently deferential. In X’s view, I believe, I had in effect criticized her management of the tutoring center by criticizing the collecting behavior. But the two times I did it were separated by years. Her petty resentment of my comment on her hair color (and I stand by my version of what I actually said) and her bringing up an incident that she herself said was nothing, just to have a another way of denigrating me in front of Y, astounded me. But it bolstered my belief that she does not fight fair. I do not think that for her, the overriding aim of the tutoring center is to serve the students; rather, it is to make her look good to her bosses. So to appear to be doing good is okay even if it is not optimal for the students.  There are many good features of the tutoring center and I believe that it mostly serves its purpose. But getting rid of an experienced and capable tutor is not the way to do that.

Ah, but there’s more. TRIO, which is a grant-funded Pellissippi State support program for disadvantaged students, has its own tutoring program. Because the students tend to need only remedial-level help, I had never worked for TRIO, except on one occasion when some TRIO body came up to the Tutoring Center to ask if a math tutor could help out briefly with a computer-based math problem. I went downstairs to the TRIO computer lab and was able to get the issue straightened out fairly quickly.

I had a good impression of TRIO from that one visit, however, so when my job at the Tutoring Center was closed off for me, I applied to TRIO as a tutor. The woman who heads TRIO, E, called me after she saw my application. Because I had worked for Pellissippi State for so long, I did not need to be extensively vetted, so she interviewed me by phone. We clicked immediately. She told me how TRIO tutoring worked (appointments rather than walk-in service) and I agreed to work that way. We discussed helping kids and we seemed to be on the same page with that. She added that TRIO always needs math tutors. So at the end of the interview she said she was going to tell Human Resources to issue me a contract, which HR would notify me about in a few business days.

I waited for two weeks. Having heard nothing, I called E back. She was mad – not at me, but at HR. She said that HR had told her that they refused to hire me, but would not tell her why. Further, they told her to inform me about this. She refused, pointing out to them that that notification was properly their job and she wasn’t going to do it for them. Clearly, they had decided just to leave me hanging, and that made her mad also. We made “sorry, what a shame” noises at each other for a minute or two and then rang off.

I was incensed. One Pellissippi group might have thought that I was not a team player, but that did not mean that I was not a good fit for another group that wanted me. However, Human Resources had apparently decided to issue a blanket blacklisting for me. I noticed that a “help wanted” list that Pellissippi State publishes in the Knoxville News Sentinel always had an entry for TRIO – until a week or two after my firing meeting. Since then (as of October 8 at a minimum), the list has not included a TRIO entry. Of course I wonder why.

A friend told me I should get a lawyer and sue Pellissippi State for something….ageism, sexism, whatever. I told him that I had no heart for a long court fight, even assuming that I had a case that a lawyer would take. It occurred to me too that from time to time Pellissippi has an opening for an adjunct professor of Physics/Engineering Science, which I would be eligible to teach with my master’s degree in physics.  (And my other master’s degree in nuclear engineering.) But I would now bet that if I applied for that position in the future, I would be blacklisted from that too. What if I applied to some other state school governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents, such as the University of Tennessee? Would I be blacklisted from them? I certainly fear so.

I conclude from all this that my former boss X’s pique has likely cost me my career in college tutoring, at least at State of Tennessee schools.

Finally, let me quote from an E-mail message X wrote to a student in 2017 with reference to me: “Janet has been a part-time tutor for several years. She is brilliant and talented in multiple subjects.” Ah, but not a team player, which to this boss was more important than serving the students as an academic workplace is supposed to do.

Op-Ed

Goodbye, Dear Claxyton Moultry

On March 24 the Greater Knoxville Cactus and Succulent Society (aka the cactus club) held its first meeting of 2024. The first to arrive was Claxyton Moultry, a longtime member and my friend. My heart sank as I saw him walk up the hill from the street to my house: he had clearly lost a lot of weight and although he didn’t seem to labor as he climbed, his face seemed drawn. As usual, he wasn’t going to introduce the subject of his health himself, but as an old friend I did. He said that he had lost 35 pounds. He had some sort of pancreatic issue and as a result he had become diabetic. He was working out at the gym only twice a week instead of five times and since everything tasted bad after he ate it, he was not eating much.

As others arrived, we greeted them and went inside. Our most bombastic member started to talk about something, but I shushed him to say that Claxyton was telling us something important. Claxyton recapped what he had already told me and then added some details, such as that he had had severe itching from the effects on his liver. Apparently the doctors were doing some further tests. Everybody was supportive and encouraging – Claxyton was a quiet person but popular in our group. He was going to celebrate his 70th birthday on March 25. Claxyton’s wish, expressed for several years, was to finish his 40th year of teaching art in the elementary grades of the Knox County school system and then retire. Now, he explained, he would have to take a medical leave of absence while he was being treated for his illness. But at least he had the glow from winning a teacher of the year award that recently.

About three weeks later I got a call that Claxyton was in hospice care. Apparently he had finally been taken to the hospital and was in a regular room only a couple of days before it was realized that he had two weeks or less to live. He had advanced pancreatic cancer. My husband and I rushed to the hospital to see him. When we got there, the sheet was over his head and I feared the worst. But his best friend William assured us that Claxyton was still alive, that Claxyton himself had pulled the sheet over his head as he fell asleep due to the sedation. So we visited with William; with Deirdre, Claxyton’s teaching partner of 11 years; and with other teachers and a fellow gym rat. Deirdre had put up in the hospital room some pictures of Claxyton, other teachers, and herself in various costumes they had donned for school events over the years; it was a revelation to see the quiet and reserved Claxyton mugging in character attire, including one where he was bare-chested and all that time working out really showed.

On April 18, he died. I was put in touch with his brother and sister, the last of five siblings. We in the cactus club arranged to go water the succulents in his greenhouse until it was time to put them outside for the summer, as was his usual practice. Over the next month, we watered, fought an ant infestation, and moved the plants out to the patio where the rain could water them. His brother and two friends told us that Claxyton’s wish for his beloved plants was that we in the cactus club take all the plants we wanted. The rest of the plants were to be donated to a horticultural entity at the University of Tennessee. We put together an inventory (with photographs of each plant), organized the adoption of plants by our members and club friends who had helped with the greenhouse and the watering, and finally oversaw the removal of the rest of the plants by the University of Tennessee people. Since as president of the club I led the effort, especially the compilation of the inventory, I felt the most responsible for making sure that Claxyton’s last wish for his beloved plants came true. I hope that we did it the way he would have wanted it.

Claxyton’s funeral was well attended. The audience included about forty people who were his fellow teachers, his students, or his students’ parents; I know this because in his niece’s eulogy she asked them to stand and I counted them. There was also a large family and friend contingent and a good representation from our little cactus club. Claxyton was black, by the way, so the audience included both black and white people. I was pleased that so many people, at the hospital and at the funeral, showed their obvious fondness for Claxyton and said that they thought he was a great guy. His niece, also a teacher in the public school system, said jokingly that nobody ever gave her a gift card at Christmas but Claxyton always got a pile of gift cards at Christmas from students and fellow teachers.

I will interject here that at our cactus club booth at the Lavender Festival in June, a woman came up to us and said that she hadn’t realized until she read Claxyton’s obituary that he was a part of our club. She was the parent of children who had had Claxyton as their art teacher over multiple years and she said that he was hugely popular among the students and parents. I was so gratified to hear this said again.

I spoke at Claxyton’s funeral on behalf of our club. Below is basically what I said. Because of time constraints, I did omit one thing I would have liked to have said: that once I asked Claxyton why he liked succulents so much (as opposed to other plants). In his usual think-before-you-speak manner, he paused a moment and then said it was because of their distinctive forms, especially their symmetry. Of course, it was the artist in him speaking.

My Eulogy of Claxyton

When people associate with each other for a long time – at work or in a special interest group – they form a family. Claxyton was a member of the Greater Knoxville Cactus and Succulent Society family for at least 35 years. (It might have been a lot longer, but our oldest records are missing.) I myself have known Claxyton for 30 years. Years ago, he told us that he was showing several pieces at an Oak Ridge art gallery show, so I went. I was blown away by his pieces, which were excellent. I was particularly impressed by his command of proportion, in particularly in his sculpture of a jaguar. [Heads nodded among the artists in the audience.]

When I was assigned to organize a meeting at which we painted succulents on tee shirts, of course I enlisted Claxyton as our guru. He circulated among us as we painted, giving suggestions and encouragement, while also painting his own shirt. At the end, we all looked at each others’ shirts. There was some nice stuff, but Claxyton’s was awesome. There was a foreground, a middle ground, a background; the rocks looked like rocks and the soil like soil. Dotted here and there were several succulents, beautifully rendered. Claxyton told me last year that he still had the shirt. I advise the family not to give it to charity, but instead to frame it!

 

Claxyton specialized in taking nice small plants [my hand motions indicating sizes] and turning then into nice big plants [hand motions indicating bigger sizes] by sustained and loving attention over a long period of time. I think that this was a metaphor for his teaching career as well. [Heads nodded over in the teacher group as I said this.]

At our booth at the Lavender Festival, Claxyton stood out front as our greeter. Somehow people just felt drawn to him. He seemed to know so many people, all of whom greeted him with enthusiasm. I have seen teenagers whom he had taught years earlier run up to him and hug him. Claxyton’s body building came in handy when he had to move his plants: I have seen him carrying two large pots with large succulents in them, one in each hand, half a block to our booth at the Lavender Festival. It helps to have muscles [I made a bodybuilding pose] if you’re going to grow the big succulents!

Several years ago we had a meeting where we were discussing some succulent and the speaker made reference to a black part of the plant. Then for some reason he made a lame joke, saying that Claxyton should understand that black referred to the plant and not to Claxyton. It was a dumb thing to say, but Claxyton, who had known the speaker for at least 35 years and knew that the guy liked him, tactfully did not reply. I thought that I should say something, so I turned to Claxyton and said, “I know you are black and all. But we’ve known each other for so many years and I just don’t see it.” He replied, “I feel the same way. At the end of the day, we are all the same. We’re all just people.” [Emphasis mine]

So goodbye, Claxyton – gone to God. The God who made all the succulents in their wonderful variety….and the God who made all of us, ditto. [There was a little frisson in the audience as I said this – just right.]

Op-Ed

Goodbye, Robert Booker

[Yet another letter not published by the Knoxville News Sentinel. Robert Booker died this year (2024) at age 89. He was a veteran, an activist for civil rights back in the day, the first black person to be elected to the state legislature from Knoxville, and an administrative assistant to the mayor of Knoxville. But he found his true calling when he became the head of the Beck Cultural Center, which studies and has exhibits about black history and culture. He did that for 17 years and then after retirement continued to serve as an archivist and historian there. He wrote a column for the Knoxville News Sentinel, addressing many black history but also many other topics. I thought very highly of him. The reason that I was so ticked off at the News Sentinel for not publishing my letter is my usual complaint about them: there were op-eds from “important” Knoxville-area people, but nothing from anybody who seemed to be an ordinary person. That was even more true of the three letters they published about him: they were all from bigwigs, like Senator Marsha Blackburn. Most of the pieces they published seemed to be by people who probably knew him slightly, if at all, e.g., Blackburn. I thought too that most of the pieces were completely generic and formulaic, while my letter below would have given readers a more personal view of the man. But that’s the News Sentinel for you.]

When I started reading Bob Booker’s columns, I realized that he and I had a lot in common. He read and admired the poem “Thanatopsis” as a teen; he liked “Amos ‘n Andy”. (Me too!) He had fond memories of time spent in a foreign country as a young adult; he was quietly proud of daring, in his old age, to sing in public. (Me too!) He was interested in history, especially in how people form connections and become a community. (Me too!)

Several years ago, on impulse, I called him at the Beck Cultural Center. We had a good long talk. He spoke the way he wrote – he was cordial, gentlemanly, and nonpolemical. His speech was measured and perfect. (Well, he was an English major in college.) He was black and I am white; he was a man and I am a woman; and he was 15 years older than I am. But speaking together, we were, as a black friend of mine put it, just people.

His death is indeed a loss. Knoxville should be proud of having produced such a nice guy and such a noble spirit.

Op-Ed

It Is Hypocrisy for People of Conscience To Support Trump

I believe that if you are a person of conscience, i.e., one who lives his or her life based on ethical or moral principles, it is hypocrisy for you to support Donald Trump. Let me lay it out for you.

I am 74 years old, only about four years younger than Trump. I have been hearing about him since he was about 40, so for about 38 years. The New York DA’s allegations against him regarding fraudulent business dealings are nothing new to a Trump observer; he has been accused of such things for the entire time I have known of him. He and his father were always famous for using their wealth and power to get around the legal fences that confine other people. Notable in my memory are the many allegations of his having stiffed people who worked for him, such as lawyers, contractors, and the little people who perform all kind of services for rich people. They would have to go to court to get their money; many could not afford to and so in effect gave their services unwillingly to Trump. He has gotten away with all of this for so many years that he thinks he is bulletproof and can, for example, attack judges actively presiding over cases involving him.

It is true that allegations are not proof. However, when accusations of fraud and cheating are numerous and new accusations surface again and again over a period of years, one has to assume that there is a lot of truth to them. Not everybody can be lying, after all. So I have come to the conclusion that as regards business, he is in fact a dirty dealer.

Regarding the January 6 event, Trump clearly wanted to overturn the results of the election and he seized on any and every method to do so. Al Gore appealed the results of his presidential election to the Supreme Court, but once the ballots were recounted and the verdict was in, he accepted defeat gracefully. He looks like a real class act next to Trump, who incited a mob to riot, with loss of life and a great deal of resultant damage; who bad-mouthed Mike Pence, his own man; and who watched TV and said nothing while said mob threatened and hunted for Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and others.Trump’s closest advisors and his children urged him to speak out that day and tell his supporters to remain peaceful and depart the capital, but he refused to do so until late in the day, when the carnage was nearly over and it was clear that the mob was being contained. In addition, he clearly knew about the conspiracy to have some states produce fake electors to change the results in those states and he appears to have encouraged them to do so.

We have been known in the world as a nation that has peaceful and binding elections. Trump would have changed that, making the United States lose its reputation as a democratic exemplar. He would not care, of course; he admires Putin, Xi, Kim, and Orban. How can he be the front person for the citizens of the United States when interacting with other nations if he operates as a dictator? (Motto: What’s good for me is good for the country because I am the most important person in it.) He also wants to do what a CNN commentator says is common practice for dictators: he wants to turn his leadership of the country into a family business. He had his daughter, son-in-law, and son in his administration while he was president and now he wants to have his daughter-in-law take over as head of the Republican National Committee. Presumably one aim would be to have the RNC continue to pay some of his legal bills.

His many statements about our relationships with other countries are often outrageous. Case in point: his recent statement that if a NATO ally is attacked by Russia and that nation is in arrears in its NATO dues, Russia could have its way with the ally for all Trump cares. Trump’s apologists/enablers argue that he is being rhetorical, that in fact he wouldn’t abandon a NATO ally. But a person who used to work for him when he was president, Alyssa Farah Griffin, recently stated on CNN that in fact Trump often made such statements about NATO when speaking with his staff, where he wouldn’t be making a rhetorical point. However, even if the statements he makes about world politics were rhetorical, they might still be taken to be factual by a global bad actor such as Russia or North Korea or Iran. It is important to give clear signals to other countries about your intentions and aims, as every commentator tells us, but Trump disregards this advice just to make political points. Again, he puts aside the welfare of the country in order to satisfy his ego. Retired general Wesley Clark just stated on CNN that the recent NATO comment and other comments Trump has made about NATO are “treasonous”, something that is sobering since the general is not given to making rash statements.

Besides that, Trump’s mocking of Nikki Haley for not having her husband by her side while campaigning – when his absence was due to his being deployed overseas – was just appalling. We recall his mocking of John McCain and other older vets for various reasons. Trump may well be losing the votes of veterans and actively serving military people, insult by insult.

But finally, what inspires the most contempt in me for Trump’s behavior is his attitude toward women. The famous 2005 Access Hollywood bus interview in which he not only admitted but boasted of how when women were standing next to him, e.g., at a photo shoot, he would force his hand under their clothes and into their crotches. He said that when you are a “star” women “let you” do things like that. Supposedly he apologized years later for saying that. But he made it clear in 2023 that he regarded this sort of thing as the normal behavior of men since time immemorial and that when you were wealthy and famous and, again, a “star”, you could get away with it.

As a woman, I think yikes, what a boor. Not only that, his actions constitute criminal behavior. Women “let” him only because he took them by surprise and they were stunned and so they didn’t make any verbal protest, especially when others were around. Yes, they “let” him do it in the sense that they did not raise an outcry or call the cops, but it is as he says: he was so rich and famous that they undoubtedly thought that they would not be believed or, more likely, that he would just get away with it whatever they said. But I would be willing to bet that 99% of them really minded and resented his groping them, as if they were just objects to satisfy his lust. A jury certainly believed that in the E. Jean Carroll case.

Besides that, a friend of mine points out that two of his three wives were foreign-born, when his attitude toward immigrants is dismissive. Well, those wives were both beauties, after all, so clearly he makes exceptions for the physically favored. He obviously likes to have a younger woman on his arm, so he has divorced the old wife and married a new one twice. In Melania’s case the age difference is 24 years. Presumably he is done remarrying, but you never can tell with an ego like his.

So given what I said above, I find it completely hypocritical that some folks who profess to be people of conscience are supporting Trump, especially Christians. Trump is patently not “a godly man” as a religious supporter recently called him. Dealing fairly with others? Keeping your word? Giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s (e.g., fair elections) and to God what is God’s? Honoring warriors? Respecting women and other non-white-male people? Deferring to authority, expertise, and informed counsel? Trump checks none of these boxes.

Why would people overlook his many demonstrable faults and support him? In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Trump said this: “ “The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration, and a very effective form of promotion.” I think that the reason why some people of conscience support Trump is what Jonah Goldberg referred to (quoting someone else) as power worship: somebody who seems to bestride the earth like a Colossus inspires hero worhip in them. But this means that their ethical and moral principles are just skin deep – they don’t believe that they apply to the Big Men who seem to be nearly gods.

The ghost writer of The Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz, came to regret his participation in writing the book. He spent months with Trump, gathering material for it by discussing Trump’s views with him, and got to know him well. Schwartz now says, “I put lipstick on a pig”. Many who have been in Trump’s close orbit – most of his advisors in government, for example – have come to see that Trump is arrogant, narcissistic, reckless – and feckless. Most of them obviously fear to denounce him publicly or testify against him, but they know very well what he is. I expect that after he dies some day, we will see truthtellers come out of the woodwork and tell us that what Trump is accused of today is just the tip of the iceberg (e.g., about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein). Until then, the stories told by the current truthtellers, such as Cassidy Hutchinson, will have to suffice.

We can hope that Trump will be soundly defeated in the upcoming election, since the highly hypocritical Republican Party seems bent on nominating him again. If so, it would be best for everybody if he would just slink off into the night and not even think of slouching toward Bethlehem to be “born” yet again.

Op-Ed

Salute to Linda Ronstadt

The list of my favorite popular singers used to include the following. Among the men, there were Frank Sinatra (of course), for his vocal facility and his incomparable phrasing; Louis Armstrong, for his appealing voice, plus his being a trumpet ace and leader of a band; Doc Watson, for his acute coverage of the country idiom and his warm baritone; Andy Williams, for his agile voice and wonderful choice of songs; and Bobby Darren, who tastefully infused jazz into songs like his masterful Mack the Knife and bravely carried on his singing and arranging career while in effect under sentence of death. (He did die of heart disease at age 37.) Among the women, there were Judy Garland (of course), for her pouring of her complete self into every song and her incomparable phrasing; Keely Smith, for her earnest voice; Karen Carpenter, for her warm, sincere voice that always seemed as if she were singing for you alone; and the incomparable, original Peggy Lee, who also infused jazz tastefully into popular songs to produce impressive results. Armstrong, Watson, and Carpenter also seemed to be nice, humble people, so I was happy for them to succeed for that reason. Among groups, for me the top were The Mamas and The Papas, so intensely in harmony with one another and so blessed with good songs, and the Eagles, again with so many interesting songs that were well arranged.

But after a certain point, I put one singer at the very top of my list, the one I could listen to forever: Linda Ronstadt.

I knew her song with the Stone Poneys, Different Drum, which she recorded at age 21. I heard some of her rock songs over the years. I knew of her also because of my mother’s comment as we drove through Tucson that Ronstadt’s Hardware, a store we were at that moment passing, was Linda Ronstadt’s father’s company and that Linda Ronstadt was from Tucson. Since I grew up in Southern Arizona, that was a significant connection. Then one day I was watching TV and chanced on an old movie that she was in: The Pirates of Penzance, in which I seem to remember she co-starred with Kevin Kline. I thought that she did a very creditable job. She also appeared on Broadway in this operetta; a YouTube video in which she sings Poor Wandering One has comments from people admiring her vocal stamina, something that struck me too as I watched the movie. She was quoted in something I read about the time the movie came out that she hadn’t used her upper register in years and liked doing so again. My late first husband bought her CD of big band standards, Lush Life, and we listened to it often. Again, she did a pretty good job. She recorded duets with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton – she always did the country feel well.

Still, I didn’t pay much attention to her as a singer until my late first husband bought me a CD of her first album in Spanish, Canciones de Mi Padre (Songs of My Father – her father, despite his German name, identified as Hispanic). I Was Blown Away! You see, the songs were old popular songs from the border area, not modern at all, and they required a lot of vocal stamina in holding out the long notes and vocal gymnastics in singing the rapid syllables. She did it all extremely well. I particularly admired her performances of La Cigarra (The Cicada), about someone who has lost a love and now wants to die singing, like the cicada; Rogaciano El Huapanguero (Rogaciano the Balladeer), about a popular local singer who has died and is mourned by the whole pueblo; and La Charreada (a charreada is like a rodeo festival), narrating all that goes on at a charreada. Her version of the latter is a favorite of many people.

My husband bought me Mas Canciones (More Songs), with more vocal fireworks and more heart-wrenching romantic drama. I particularly admired Tata Dios (Father God), with the singer being a dying woman; Mi Ranchito (My Little Ranch), with the singer being a guy who lost his love and, apparently because of depression, his ranch; and the magnificent Crucifijo de Piedra (Stone Crucifix), about a woman who meets her lover at a church and is told he is dumping her. (The Jesus on the big stone crucifix is so moved by her plight that he cries with her.)

My next album of hers was Mi Jardin Azul: Las Canciones Favoritas (My Blue Garden: The Favorite Songs). This was a compilation album including some of the songs I mentioned above plus some more modern songs. Among the latter I particularly liked Mi Jardin Azul, referring to the garden that seems blue after a breakup; Adonde Voy (Where Am I Going), a sympathetic anthem about an illegal immigrant by Tish Hinojosa; and Mentira Salome (Salome Lies). Finally, I got her album Frenesí (Frenzy), from which the three songs I mentioned were drawn.

My second husband bought me a CD of popular favorites by Linda Ronstadt. I could listen all day to her singing Blue Bayou and Desperado and You’re No Good and Long Long Time and Someone To Lay Down Beside Me and Hurt So Bad. Again, she does it all: the strong held notes, the nimble fast syllables, and above all the heartfelt feeling she puts into every song. She could sing Ring Around the Rosie and make it memorable.

Linda Ronstadt is a titan of popular music and it is just sad that Parkinson’s (or whatever it is that afflicts her) cut short her singing career, although fortunately she did make it to senior status before she had to quit. I hope that she has a peaceful and happy rest of her life. Bless you for your many efforts to entertain us, Linda.