Today my friend Jack Hunter retires after several years in the Post Office on campus. If you've spent any time around here, you've almost certainly met Jack. If he's not behind the window in the Post Office, he's taking pictures somewhere. Just a week ago there was a retirement party and on a table to the side of the room were Jack's photo albums. I don't know whether there were four or five of those three-inch thick binders overstuffed with photo album sheets, but I bet he left a few more at home. That picture on my home page with Pasta and Neon was taken by Jack in the parking lot of the Post Office not long after I moved to the Registrar's Office.

In less than a decade, Jack has met everyone on campus. I know, because he's got photographic proof. From President Morrill and his wife, to students caught walking through the Commons building, to (and I'd bet on this even though I haven't seen it) someone in a car asking directions. There have been pictures of buildings under construction, and pictures of events (he's been at every Commencement since I've been in the Registrar's Office), but mostly his pictures are of people in the middle of their weekday.

I've always felt that it's what we do or have in common that binds us together. I'm perfectly willing to accept that just about everybody I meet is a nice person I could talk to at length. But the true friendships are made when both parties share a passion. If you've worked in theatre, you and I automatically share a connection. If you and I have worked together on a production, we've got a common experience and the connection is much stronger. I read in the UR alumni magazine that Lauren Fitzgerald, my evil wife in King Lear, is off in England. Her blurb, her name, jumped off the page for me more than anyone else's (theatre folk seem to be pretty bad at sending in news to the Alumni Office, or else there might have been a few more names popping off the page).

The neat thing about Jack is that his photos do it all. Through photography he's made a connection with thousands of us. But more than that, he's managed to do in his short time at Richmond what I can't seem to do yet no matter how I try. You see, photography is Jack's way of taking in life. But it's also his act of giving back, of saying he is here and this is what he's thought and felt. In one simple (though repeated) act, he's managed to share his life with all of us in a significant way. Last year the Virginia Baptist Historical Society put Jack's photos on exhibit. And rightly so: he has captured a time at the University of Richmond, and distilled the sense of who we are or have been during this time.

This journal is my way of saying "I get it." I understand now, on the day of Mr. Hunter's retirement, that the taking in isn't just about reading Milton, digesting Faust, surfing the web for the next new thing. The taking in can simultaneously be a giving back. I spend most of my day thinking. This journal will be a little thinking out loud. Not that any of it is necessarily useful to anyone. I don't think Jack took all those pictures for us. It's just something he had to do. I'm just going to keep posting a weekly journal and hope that someone somewhere finds these pages and gets something -- anything -- from them.

If you're an old friend stopping by, thanks. If not, perhaps we'll find something in common along the way. Let me know. If I can make any connection with half as many people as Jack Hunter has, I'll be lucky indeed.

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