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<font color="black" size="4" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font size="4">What saw print on Tuesday's edition of ST (only slightly edited from previous drafts):</font>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><b>Gordon</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The
name is Gordon Harper, a friend at '79 (Scalia of the Supreme Court in
yesterdays column was also '79) who died February 8. Diagnosed with leukemia September, he
expected to end his existence within a year.
He lasted four months.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">This
reflection is not about the historic particulars of Gordon, spacetime occupied
and roles played. Nor how he affected other people (he did, many), including
his supportive wife Roxane who stayed in the background. As a group facilitator,
like his colleague Joe Slicker who at 96 finally drew the curtain also this
week, he worked with individuals and groups to assist articulate vision,
identify contradictions, push practical proposals, and decide on a course of
action, after a consensus for a group and cognitive discourse for an individual.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I remember
Gordon '77 as a staff member in the HDTI (Human Development Training Institute)
in India, <i>Nava Gram Prayas,</i>
to create new communities<i>. </i>In
the plateau of Maharashtra outside of Aurangabad where the relics of history
are carved in the Ellora and Ajanta caves, I journeyed to learn of their
construct only to find out that whatever they had on their plates emerged
collegially from heads butting against each other around a table, that
conceptually, I was already on the ground with the methodology and material.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Gordon
took the four-year BA program of his academic background and constructed University
13, a 13-week design. A movement waited to be triggered in India, and we
had a generic construct ready to be filled with flesh and blood. The
construct got transformed into the HDTI.
In the same fashion, I returned to the Philippines with the construct to
"just do it".</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I
did, on Mactan Island among in Sudtonggan village, with the Dick and Linda Alton
family and resident staff. Gordon
assisted the HDP, a Human Development Project already on the ground with the
language of the new glocality for participants. Success in numerical achievement,
or awards from the Rotary Club, or recognition from the Chamber of Commerce, was
not the agenda. In Maliwada onward, as far as career went, I no longer
had any. I learned to just go do whatever I knew needed to be done, to
ignore the judgment, critique, and expectation of society and history, but work
in and through them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">We
called it HDTS, a school targeting 24 villages in Mactan, built a training
school in Sudtonggan and invited villages around Langub HDP north of Davao City
in Mindanao, by a geo-thermal plant in Camarines Sur, and oil drilling in
Palawan. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I told
time by watching Gordon mix his 5-pm gin-and-tonic, sniffing the waft of a
cherry smelling pipe as he lit up in the afternoon. A Baptist minister, I
never understood how he could get away with his habits (I was an ordained
Methodist cleric) until I realized that not all Baptists were created
equal! Nor Methodists for that matter! Gordon was a pedagogue <i>par
excellence</i>. I sat under the smell of
his smokes while he kept his gin-tonic routine to himself without
encouraging others to join him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Since
Gordon announced his leukemia (and the death of Scalia and Slicker), I reflected about the
facticity of my aging. At 70, I turned into
a "clutch", dropping things on the floor, finding it difficult to get
back up again. The leg calves cramp at night; I make a restroom run several
times before sunrise. Brain cells freeze on recall. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I
taught SVES six graders in the previous decade; recognize former students but don't
remember names. Many staff offices in the Community College where I go to
arrange to teach a few courses for the next term. Familiar but older face behind a desk
invariably greets me, smiling like it was only yesterday when they came to
Elementary school.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I get
into the car to drive to the store, and when I get there, I forgot what it was
that I drove there for. I connect to the Internet and do not remember
what email I needed to send. I am busy at my dwelling everyday, with many
indications of things that got started but nothing accomplished at the end of
the day. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I
picture Gordon nodding his head on all of these, raising a twitch-like lift on
one side of his mouth, finger his goatee without letting on that he probably
went through this part of aging in the last ten years. Like Gandhi, he
had playfulness about him on life's serious matters.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">We
won't go into "eternity" as I don't think Gordon delved into that
much. One of my students last year
asked, "Are you an atheist?" after my spiel on the
"here-and-now"; another responded: "You've not been
listening. He just wants everyone to
know he is totally responsible for the 86 years of his existence."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I imagine
how Gordon spent his last moments. He grimaced at the terminus, welcomed
the friend. The end cometh, it says. Gordon lived his life.
The review of its fullness is finished, outrospection done, he
introspects. With a beatific smile plastered on his face, he dies his
death. As the old metaphor exuded: Glory, Hallelujah, praise be! To Scalia, Slicker, and Gordon.</div>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 18px; clear: both;"><i>wangzhimu2031</i>
<div>earthrise consciousness, a gift; earthbound commitment, my choice</div>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all, celebrate!<br>
</i>
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