Snowing it is…big flakes and sticking on the ground. Twenty-eight degrees and Red Bud Trees are blooming on Campus. Spring is a little over a week away…but you would not know it…today. March is a month that is full of surprises. ‘In like a lion…out like a lamb.’ Today we are experiencing some Lion…

My Brass Gnome, that Jonathon got me, says do not count your chickens before they are hatched…and I think he is wise beyond his size… I was pondering the lack of institutional memory …and thus the absence thereof. I noticed the absence of this most important memory for the success of institutions such as the University…both when I worked there and for the 11 plus years since. We seem to continually seek answers to old problems that were solved many years before…but we did not bother to write the answer down. We continue to make the same mistakes. Or as a form of innovation at SIUC…new chancellors who change the University Logo…as their mark of leadership for the flagship Campus.

Churches have the incapacitating knack of forgetting their history. Endemic problems that occurred not more than a decade ago…are forgotten as they move the deck chairs on the Titanic. Hope for positive change yields to a recognition that change will not happen when the leadership ship is steered by those who forget the past.

Seek we do wisdom among the sycophants and ladder climbers. We look to the Court Jester for the wisdom of the ages…and we weep when destruction falls down around us…