From the Editor

For once, if not on some other occasion, T.S. Eliot may have been right -- "And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back."  And here we are with it again, at the end of the semester, the close of the year, the beginning of winter -- now we have some time to rest and time to measure what we've done and to mark where we've been. I suppose there's direction in this, believing that we get better with time, or worse -- that we learn something, grow stronger, or weaker, to some degree. The real comfort in the season, I suppose, is that we are reminded that we belong to a body of people moving through time together -- working together, fighting together, finding meaning together, and taking solace in that common remembrance.  "The way forward is the way back"  is surely the way, but the way does not promise resolution or the "closure" everyone seeks.  According to Eliot, time is not an agent -- it just passes, and we are here and then not here. "You cannot face it steadily," he writes, "but this thing is sure, / That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here."  So what can we do, but remember without practical purpose, to remember those with whom we've shared our lives, our working lives, and to remember them because they were once with us.  A year ago Christmas day, one of the department's endeared and respected colleagues passed away suddenly at his home. Norman Rosenfeld taught in the English department for thirty years from 1965 to 1995.  His former student, Mike Hamer, now a member of the English faculty, took time to remember his mentor, friend, and colleague, in his essay "Norman, Teacher."

We wish you safe travel and a rich holiday season!