![\"Bear](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/image1-300x225.jpeg?resize=300%2C225\")
I promised you a recap of the 2016 U of A Homecoming events, and here it is.<\/p>\nI promised you a recap of the 2016 U of A Homecoming events, and here it is.<\/p>\n
The fifty years between 1966 and now seem to have passed in a blink, and things have changed remarkably.<\/p>\n
I have a clear remembrance of my first day of class as a junior, venturing into the History of Western Civ lecture and having the professor tell the four hundred or so of us gathered in an auditorium that \u201cthe only thing more contemptible than an undergraduate male was an undergraduate female.\u201d\u00a0 My thoughts on the subject now, the ones that can be printed anyway, were \u2026\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s not go there.\u00a0 But are we to assume that he arrived on this planet as a fully vested history professor?\u00a0 And, if he didn\u2019t like students, what on God\u2019s green earth was he doing teaching?<\/p>\n
But all of that is fodder for another day.\u00a0 What I learned from visiting with classmates\u2014something I already knew from my own history\u2014is that I was not the only one who had doors slammed in my face on account of being a girl.\u00a0 The female drama student who wanted to be a director?\u00a0 She is one now, but she was told no in no uncertain terms back in the day.\u00a0 The girl who wanted to be an anthropologist when she grew up?\u00a0 Good luck with that one, but it turns out she made the grade, too.<\/p>\n
At the Saturday tailgate party, I was introduced to a recent U of A Creative Writing graduate\u2014a female, no less.\u00a0 So they let her in, and they gave her a degree, but guess what?\u00a0 She\u2019s interested in writing \u201cthrillers.\u201d\u00a0 They wanted her to write \u201cliterary fiction.\u201d\u00a0 I believe, I have previously quoted the late Tony Hillerman on that score.\u00a0 He used to say, \u201cLiterary fiction is where not much happens to people you don\u2019t like very much.\u201d\u00a0 Thank you, Tony.\u00a0 My sentiments exactly.<\/p>\n
Being an honored guest at the homecoming festivities is, I suspect, a whole lot like being a homecoming queen only better.<\/p>\n
People who know me as a public speaker probably think I\u2019m ten feet tall and bullet proof.\u00a0 Give me a mic and a stage and I\u2019m fine.\u00a0 Put me in a cocktail party style reception, and I\u2019m filled with dread.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not the only member of the family who is affected in a similar fashion.\u00a0 On Thursday, when we went to the opening reception Bill and I made a bee-line to the furthest corner of the room, thinking we\u2019d be out of harm\u2019s way.\u00a0 What we didn\u2019t expect was that one group of people after another would track us down in that quiet corner to visit.\u00a0 There was one gentleman, someone who doesn\u2019t read my books but who had been compelled by his wife to read the blog, who did a five minute stand-up comedy riff on things plucked from the weekly postings\u2014including mentioning that he\u2019d be coming to the brunch at our house on Sunday as long as the gas gauge in his car didn\u2019t quit working.<\/p>\n
I had been asked to say a few words at the reception, and I was honored to do so.\u00a0 I would say that the majority of the people in the room had never read any of my books, and they were astonished that I would be\u00a0 \u201cfunny.\u201d\u00a0 They probably have me confused with someone who writes \u2026 well \u2026 literary fiction.\u00a0 They were surprised that, in my talk, I had never enough to pay homage to that wonderful literary light of our era\u2014Rusty Warren!\u00a0 Knockers up, anybody? I was also able to mention a guy from Bisbee, Arizona, Button Salmon who, as he lay dying in a Tucson hospital bed as the result of an automobile wreck, gave fellow members of a long-ago U of A football team his heartfelt admonition\u2014\u201cBear Down.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m glad that a Bisbee High School Puma is the guy who gave the Arizona Wildcats their motto!<\/p>\n
On Friday, we ventured out for the noon-time barbecue but stayed home for the bonfire.\u00a0 Saturday, we were part of the homecoming parade.\u00a0 The organizer of the events, a lady from the Alumni Association, was the one issuing marching orders, and she told Bill and me that we were expected to ride in a cart.\u00a0 When I try to run shows that are other people\u2019s shows, Bill sometimes reminds me that I shouldn\u2019t be \u201cEvieing it,\u201d\u2014a reference to my late mother who ran everybody\u2019s show regardless.\u00a0 On Saturday, when I was told to get in a cart, I got in a cart.\u00a0 At the end of the parade, one of my classmates, someone who is a blog reader and who knows about the 10,000 steps, took me to task for riding rather than walking and asked me straight out how many steps I had that day.\u00a0 Right then\u2014getting on toward evening\u2014I was only at 4,100.\u00a0 I hope she\u2019s reading this, because by the time we got home from the football game (The game may have been disappointing, but viewing it from the President\u2019s Skybox was amazing!) I did have my full compliment of 10,000 steps for that day.<\/p>\n
Before the game, at the president\u2019s tailgate party, a man sat down next to me and, upon realizing that I was from the class of 1966, asked me if I would be attending the reception at that “lady\u2019s author\u2019s house on Sunday.\u201d I allowed as how, since I was the lady author in question, I would indeed be there.\u00a0 I believe he would have welcomed a sink hole opening up in the floor and swallowing him whole about then, but no harm; no foul. (I did invite him. He didn\u2019t show!)<\/p>\n
The brunch.\u00a0 We told the Alumni Association lady early on that we would host a brunch at our home in Tucson on Sunday morning after Homecoming.\u00a0 She said it would probably be twenty-five to thirty people tops.\u00a0 We ended up with close to eighty.\u00a0 The food, catered by Feast, was wonderful.\u00a0 The weather cooperated.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t too hot. No visiting coyotes came ambling through the festivities.<\/p>\n
People who had never read my books kept asking where they could buy my books.\u00a0 It hadn\u2019t occurred to me that people would want to have books available for sale at the brunch, and the idea of having them there seemed \u2026 well \u2026 tacky.\u00a0 But finally, I ran up the flag to Mostly Books.\u00a0 I was doing a speaking event with them the next day anyway, and they already had a load of my books packed into a vehicle.\u00a0 So they showed up at beyond the last minute hand handled book sales. Thank you, Mostly Books for being my emergency bookseller-on-call!<\/p>\n
We timed our departure this time so we could participate in Homecoming, and I\u2019m glad we did. I am who I am and what I am because of those years I spent at the University of Arizona, and I wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m writing this on the patio in Tucson.\u00a0 It\u2019s sunny and pleasant.\u00a0 By Friday, when this is posted, we\u2019ll be back home in Seattle in the rain and cold.\u00a0 We have jackets laid out to take with us tomorrow.\u00a0 We won\u2019t need them to get ON the plane, but we will need them to get OFF.<\/p>\n
Bear down!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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