City College of San Francisco and Old Skool

Yesterday I was writing to an east-coast friend, my son's godmother, to wish her a happy birthday and bring her up-to-date on things of mutual interest.  I gave her the long list of retirees from CCSF this year--more than 75--some of whom she knew well.  But I didn't mention the question of CCSF's accreditation.

This should illustrate a phenomenon I was telling her about--the eclipses of my brain.  I told her about our trip to Santa Fe and the fact that it didn't occur to me immediately that a close friend was on our route.  I told her of bragging about my cousin's running the Grand, spending a whole month in a boat on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and not remembering until after we'd left the Grand Canyon that my cousin lived in Santa Fe, our destination!

So of course when I gave this long, long list of wonderful teachers and staff retiring, I failed to mention the reason that some felt that this was the time to do it.  It wasn't because they had lost faith in City College but because the whole year since the "Show Cause" warning last July has been so hard on the morale of teachers, and I really can't think of any group of people who are warmer and more caring than the teachers at CCSF, especially those in the ESL Department.

My oversight in mentioning the question of accreditation is all more remarkabale because the friend I was writing to, someone I met in the Masters in TESOL program at SFSU, was also the one who urged me, when she was teaching at the Civic Center Campus and I was staying at home with my two-year-old son, her godchild, to get a part-time job at CCSF.

Yesterday was such a good day that I lost all sense of time.  I had an upgrade on my iPhone and hadn't yet heard from my son whether or not I should pay $10/month on insurance for it, so I'd left it home when I visited a friend and her husband, who has leukemia.  I enjoyed the visit and felt heartened that he was looking  good and was such a good conversationalist that I lost track of the time--some of which was spent discussing Old Skool Cafe, where he'd played the clarinet the day he learned that he had leukemia.  The staff there--servers and musicians--had given him a plaque with all their signatures, wishing him well, and another card had just surfaced.  It showed the staff at Old SKool Cafe jumping in the air with exhuberance (as they are on their website).

http://www.oldskoolcafe.org/


Inside the card were all their signatures, sending him their best wishes.

So when I got home and saw a message from the friend I'd just left I was thrilled to see a link announcing that Diane Sawyers would be visiting the Old Skool Cafe and doing a segment on it the following week!  What a perfect and perfectly connected finish to the day!

Then I saw the messages saying that the ACCJC were not going to let CCSF keep its accreditation.

I need to add a very long PS to the letter I didn't mail yesterday.  I'll begin with the popular line from the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: 

“Everything will be all right in the end so if it is not all right, it is not the end.”