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::: center home >> being here >> last donut? >> umbrella


Best Umbrella

January 29, 2016

::: More photos


Each talk at the Center ends, by tradition, with the presentation of a Center umbrella. It is a grave moment of faux dignity that brings the serious business of an academic talk to an unserious close.

I usually make the umbrella presentation. When someone else chairs the talk and closes the session, the obligation falls on them. They must, I always explain, rise to the faux dignity of the occasion.

“You have to get into the part,” I explained to Jennifer Whiting in the break at Daniel Warren’s Annual Lecture Series talk today, “You have to play act.”

Generally my encouragement falls a little flat. The best I might get from the chair is “Oh, here’s an umbrella.”

My expectations are low.

That is why I was so pleased with Jennifer’s ceremony. Dan’s lecture was drawing to a close. There had been an hour of talking and then more time in detailed probing question. We were flagging under the burden of much Kant. The time had come.

Jennifer first set the stage. It was something I’d never thought to do. She reminded Dan of her visit to California. Each month they swore it would not rain and each month it did. Then somehow, I cannot quite recall how, she gently drifted to the presentation of the umbrella.

The presentation itself was done in a powerful way. It was another one that had never occurred to me in my ten years of umbrella presentations. She opened the umbrella!

Agnes was watching from the floor. She beamed at me as I walked past. “That was the best umbrella ceremony ever!” she said.

And it was.

John D. Norton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Revised 2/2/16 - Copyright 2012