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In memory of Professor Charles Blinderman, Clark University

January 13, 2002

Worcester Telegram & Gazette

Charles S. Blinderman, 71, of Cascade Road, died Monday, Jan. 7, in St. Vincent at Worcester Medical Center, after being stricken ill.

He leaves two daughters Laura A. Blinderman of Lambertville, N.J. and Ellen S. Blinderman of Lafayette, Calif.; a brother, Harold L. Blinderman of Tamarac, Fla.; a sister, Ann Mitchell of Queens, N.Y.; four grandchildren; and a close companion, Jody Dileo, with whom he lived. He was born in the Bronx, N.Y., son of Joseph and Frieda (Pesetsky) Blinderman. He graduated from Clinton High School in New York. He received his B.A. in 1952 and his M.A. in 1953, both from New York University. He received his Ph.D. in English in 1957 from Indiana University. He was a Fulbright Scholar in London.

Mr. Blinderman was an English professor at Clark University for 39 years, retiring last year. He was also an adjunct professor of Biology at Clark University. He acted as a visiting professor at Indiana University, Worcester Art Museum and the College of the Holy Cross. He was the author of two published books “The Piltdown Inquest” and “Biolexicon.” He helped create the Continuing Education Program of the Worcester Police Department. He was the director of the Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Program at Clark University and active on several committees there. He also received many awards, including two Mellon grants.

A memorial service will be held in Tilton Hall at Clark University at a later date. There are no calling hours. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Abby’s house, 52 High St., Worcester, MA 01609. Caswell-King Funeral Home, 474 Grove St., is directing funeral arrangements.

 

the Christmas files

On the day of Christmas, he had no feelings. Every slot for every emotion had been filed away, like his taxes, in folders inside his chest. Dates were written on them for easy retrieval. His hands were reaching out now towards the filing system, copies of emotions that had once been delivered to the sender. Some were sent in passion, and burned in the process. Others lied dormant and never saw the sun, and died slowly in someone's room -- a place he knew or a room he would never see. And some even lived -- survived -- from his youth, unscathed by the erosion of age. He took them all out of the filing cabinet and laid them on his table. Each invisible emotion was there looking up at him, all asking: "Who are you?" "Why are you still with us?" I"m not you," he replied, "you are mere pieces of a life collected and filed away".

Emotions bore the feelings of love and memories they grew up in, molded by the faces and voices he remembered, and the times he lived in; times he would never see anew. On Christmas, he brought them out like gifts, and reopened them slowly, so as not to damage the sides, aged brown and dry through the accumulation and storage he afforded them. They did not speak immediately; and, in some ways, could not do so. The man who carried them was not the man to easily deal in listening to their lot. The voice of reason was accountable to them.  Yet his heart was unprepared.

It was a gift to see life opened. The presence of himself in front of these emotions; that they were alive, more alive than himself, was his Christmas. He embraced their history, and the times he gained by having lived in them. He suffered, too, from their signs, pointing to conclusions he no longer could bear, arrows towards some Ultimate direction. He was a witness of a certain kind of mortality, the loss that falls through one's own hands: these storage receipts of feelings, and the worn envelopes that would soon enclose them, indefinitely. He said good-bye and filed them away. Next year would be Christmas, the lights would be flashing, and he wished he would be at this table to feel his emotions, again.

Peter Carey and Leo Damrosch on de Tocqueville : The New Yorker

On the one hand, future democracies will probably be milder and more mediocre than aristocratic societies: there will be less brutality and brilliance, as we all drift toward a vast, undemanding median. In 2nd volume, he warns that modern democracy may be adept at inventing new forms of tyranny, because radical equality could lead to the materialism of an expanding bourgeoisie and to the selfishness of individualism (whereby we turn away from collective political activity toward the cultivation of our own gardens). In such conditions, we might become so enamored with “a relaxed love of present enjoyments” that we lose interest in the future and the future of our descendants, or in higher things, and meekly allow ourselves to be led in ignorance by a despotic force all the more powerful because it does not resemble one: “It does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/05/17/100517crbo_books_wood?currentPage=all

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We are the Oil

I am the vessel of hatred. His is the body weight of fat that grew over my muscles. He is in my body as I am in his. As I was the carrier of his end, he was the carrier of my own. We are covered in each others blood. We are the Ouroboros of greed. We are the Oil.