from the DIRECTOR
Back in October, it finally hit me as I cleaned out drawers, dusted books and typed memoranda that I was retiring, and that this newsletter would be the last in which I get enough column inches to vaunt the achievements of the museum or, in the oppo- site case, to vent my spleen that we were not doing enough. In leaving, I promise to continue the former without the desire nor necessity of the latter. It is hard enough to leave when things go well. It is harder still to retreat when it is time for your work to move to another, higher plateau of achievement. The museum is ready for new leadership with the intelligence, the creativity and the courage to make it so. In other words and to the point, after more than half my life at this museum, it is hard to find the best and most meaningful words to wish the institution, its staff and supporters my profound hopes for a glo - rious future, with gratitude to all those who helped me navigate the shoals of directorship along the way. When I began this valediction, I had no desire to borrow the poet’s words and build my rituals in farewells. I had thought to say a simple good-bye, one without intensity or regret and certainly not bit- terness. I meant to be true to John Steinbeck’s words appropriately from “The Grapes of Wrath,” in which he says “Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-bye is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to future.” Anne Morrow Lindberg reminds us that sayonara, is literally translated as, “since it must be so,” or, alternatively, “if it must be so,” and that of all the good-byes she had heard, it is the most beautiful. It has the finality that other leave-takings too often lack, with their promises to meet again, to “fare well” against the vicissitudes of life, to be pure and good enough to walk with God. It proclaims what parting must be and that, in life, separation is the occurrence common to all. Sadly, as I dust another book, straighten another shelf, or write another memorandum, I whisper to this place, my house of 30-plus years, sayonara.
Bill Eiland places flowers on the grave of the museum’s founder, Alfred Heber Holbrook.
William Underwood Eiland, Director
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