Potluck
April 5, 2016

There has been a momentous change in the Center this term. Yet it is a change that many of you will not have noticed, yet. Karen Kovalchick, the Center’s Assistant Director for decades, retired. She was, as I reported here , as much a part of the Center as the heart is of the body. Everyone who visited the Center came to know her and everyone benefited from her devotion.

Last Fall, we turned to the unimaginable task of finding a replacement. We advertised and we pored over dossiers and CVs. There were many accomplished people eager to come and work in the Center, they told us.

We needed something special. We wanted more than technical competency in the bewildering array of University systems. What matters most in the Center is that intangible sense of home and family. When you come to the Center, you are looked after. You are cared for. That is what Karen did and that is what we want a new Assistant Director to do.

We had the first inkling that Carolyn Oblak might be the one when she mentioned that she’d seen these Donuts pages. Well—-that’s not quite right. She didn’t quite mention them. She beamed as she mentioned them. Then I knew then that she’d seen in these pages the message of community that I have tried so hard to convey.

Carolyn has now been serving as our new Assistant Director for three months. It has been a very good three months. She has made the Center her home and the Fellows her family. Indeed she has told us so quite directly.

Recently, she started a new tradition of potluck lunches. I missed the last one. Unfortunately I was out of town. But I did not miss today’s. It was a quite joyous event. As noon approached, the table in our little lounge sprouted one dish after another. The variety was quite eclectic. No one can accuse us of a limited palette when in comes to our eating.

We also have some Fellows with quite specific food needs. All that was taken care of by signage.

The aromas were enticing and drew me out of my office. By time I was in the lounge, there was something of a frenzy underway. I ducked and weaved through it to get my photos.

It was only afterwards that Joyce pointed out an unnoticed decoration. Hidden under the dishes and the fuss was a lovely, quilted table mat. It was sewn by Carolyn and is, she assured me, the first of a set for the table.

There was one food aberration that was driven not by necessity but by convenience. Mike had been dropping mention of “soylent" at various moments in the year. It is a complete diet replacement in the form of a powder. Mixed with water, it is all you need to eat for the day.

Why do it? “Then you don’t have to waste time cooking and cleaning,” Mike explained. Everyone contributed something to the potluck. Would Mike contribute soylent, we asked as we sat eating. He could and he would. So off he went and he was soon mixing up doses of it for us to try.

“It tastes like cake mix,” he said, anticipating everyone’s question. And it did.

Lest I get the details wrong, I looked into the history. Soylent is best known from a 1973 dystopian science fiction movie called “Soylent Green.” The movie was in turn loosely based on a 1966 science fiction novel, Make Room! Make Room!. There finally I found the answer to the question of the name. “Soylent" is short for “SOY and LENTil steaks.”

In case you haven’t seen the movie, however, I won’t tell you the rest of the story. However I will warn you that, among those who have seen the movie, learning that Mike is eating soylent evokes an immediate disgust reaction.

They also ask if it is green. (It isn’t.)

John D. Norton