I got word of the publication of a new essay of mine in a collection about the Nobel Prize winner, J.M. Coetzee on the day I learned that Professor Patty Zimmermann had passed away suddenly. Patty and I were not close friends, but we were friends, and I admired her incredible productivity, her endless support for faculty scholarship and achievements, and her tireless devotion to the film festival, FLEFF, that she founded. But I am dedicating this essay to her today because of a special open-secret that so many of us were lucky to share in: notes of congratulations from Patty.
If you've published anything or had a notice about something you did show up on Intercom, you know of what I speak. Patty spent time each week (perhaps every day) scouring the Intercom "kudos" section for faculty accomplishments and then sending each faculty member a hand-written note of congratulations. The first time this happened to me I barely knew who Patty was. A beautiful handmade card arrived under my office door congratulating me for something I had written. I wrote to her immediately expressing my surprise and great thanks. Little did I know that this would become a regular feature of my first decade at Ithaca College. Patty sent me a note to congratulate me on my tenure decision, one for each and every annual literary festival that I have put on over the last ten years, for each essay or chapter that I published, and, when she found out that I had a podcast, she congratulated me on key guests and episodes, making sure to share the things that she had liked about them.
And this is the extraordinary part: Patty wasn't just glancing at the surface of Intercom, she was reading the work, diving in. Many of the cards that I received have Patty's thoughts on my ideas, and compliments about my writing. She took the time not only to acknowledge that I had done something, but to engage with the thing itself. That, I will tell you, is one of the truest expressions of scholarly life--a curiosity that doesn't stop at the door of one's own discipline, but which transcends our own insular intellectual lives and reaches out to learn about and think alongside others. To quote Toni Morrison, "Patty was a friend of my mind."
I tried from time to time to model Patty's unquenchable generosity and curiosity about her friends and peers, and, I would, on occasion, remember to write her an email (not a beautiful card) to congratulate her on something she had written. But if you know anything about Patty, you know that following her scholarly accomplishments would have been a job unto itself. Few scholars produce so much and with such international attention to what they have written. Patty was invited all over the world to share her work and ideas. She wrote and edited many books and articles, and she supervised The Edge, a Park School online journal to which she constantly invited IC colleagues to contribute. With everything going on in her rich and abundant scholarly life, Patty still took the time to write those notes. She wrote them to everyone, whether for close friends or those she barely knew. Those cards (what must have been thousands of them) exist as a testament to a thankless act of connection and community, something that is far too rare at this moment.
The world loses a profound scholar, IC has lost an intellectual leader, and all of us who keep our Patty cards on our bookshelves or in a special drawer, we have lost a friend of our mind. I would like to feel proud of the essay I published, but today it feels like a heavy weight, or worse, that it might never feel real without a card from Patty. Thank you, Patty. You will be remembered.