Wall of Frames
September, 2014

Long ago, sometime in 2006, we started to take Polaroid photos of people in the Center and pin them up on a corkboard. The idea was to help Fellows identify who was who. Was that the janitor or Adolf Grünbaum?

We soon learned that this was not a common thing to do.

Each year, we added a new row to the board and soon it became something of an institution. It became a part of the shared ritual of Center membership.

The photos from past years migrated from being useful references to mementos of happy times passed. Over the years, the strata accumulated. Those in the lower layers--the deeper, more distant strata--became tangible traces of a past presence. They were like artifacts to be excavated by an archaeologist. Time and again, people drifting through the lounge would stop at the Wall of Fame and browse, much as they might in the Hall of Antiquities of a museum.

Finally, last year, the board was full. What should we do? Cheryl, I believe, had the decisive suggestion. Why not take each year and frame them? That seemed quite fitting. These artifacts deserved a presentation commensurate with their value to us.

No good idea goes unpunished. Later that summer, Cheryl spend hours carefully fixing photos to matt boards in their frames. The outcome is a wall that is the faces of friends, a record of our history and a concrete trace of human presences.

John D. Norton