Easy to serve, difficult to please

This week I learned that a former department head at a college where I’ve taught adjunct classes off and on for a decade had died.

I first worked for her the semester my eldest was born. A colleague facing some unexpected surgery offered me a Western Civ II course at this other school and put me in touch with the department head there. She gave me the course on the spot, with just a few weeks to go before the spring semester. I had a hard time keeping up—I began that spring with five adjunct classes at two colleges, an ESL tutoring job for a German elementary student at Sarah’s school, and part-time work at a sporting goods store—but I was most grateful because we needed the money and the work was good. As so often, it was exactly what we needed when we needed it.

My department head didn’t have another class for me after that spring but said she would be in touch as the need arose. Lo and behold, as Sarah and I expected our second child two years later, she reached out with another spring class. I gratefully accepted. Again—just enough, when needed.

That summer I found out about a full-time position at Piedmont Tech and that’s where I’ve been ever since. When I let my department head at this other school know, she thanked me and wished me luck, and said to let her know if I ever needed anything. A generous offer, and she meant it. Over the next few years she’d check in regularly on LinkedIn—yes, LinkedIn can actually be helpful!—always encouraging me and letting me know that if I needed work all I had to do was ask.

I asked when Sarah and I found out we were expecting twins, children four and five. And my department head happily set me up with an online class, semester after semester until her retirement.

She will be missed. She not only played a willing role in God’s providential care for our family—something, as a fellow believer, she would have happily acknowledged—but was simply a good boss.

I’m old enough now to have lost several former bosses: my first boss, a family friend who managed the seafood restaurant where I kept the buffet line supplied with clean plates in middle school, and then her husband, an auctioneer and antiques appraiser who employed me for the year between college and grad school and where I learned a lot about old stuff—as well as how to properly load a moving truck. My department head joins them.

As I’ve reflected on this over the last couple days, their authority reminded me of Confucius’s concept of the junzi, the “superior” or “noble man,” a subject I once taught in an adjunct World History course for this department head: the superior man is “easy to serve but difficult to please.” A rare combination. They were gentle but demanding, graciously insisting on high standards of work, encouraging me to live up to my potential. It was never difficult to work for any of them but I always knew I could do better, and improved as I worked for them. I’m glad to say these are not the only such bosses I’ve had.

The internet is full of vindictive, cynical, hostile takes on the relationship between employer and employee, and it’s not hard to understand why so many people assume it must be adversarial. But I’ve been blessed to see a number of genuinely good bosses, including my current and former deans and department heads at my full-time work, and to cherish the memories of these who have passed away. Precisely by being a good boss they proved to be more. RIP.

The virtues of Spider-Man 2

Spider-Man and Doc Ock (Tobey Maguire and Alfred Molina) battle atop a New York City el train in Spider-Man 2

Last week I spent a day at home with a sick kid, my eldest son. He’s seven, and enamored of Spider-Man, so I thought a sick day on the couch warranted finally showing him the ultimate in Spider-Man movies, as far as I’m concerned: Spider-Man 2, which is now twenty years old. My son loved it, and took in every minute with a wide-eyed openness to enjoyment that I long to rediscover for myself. What I did rediscover, though, was how good this movie is.

I’d always enjoyed it and remembered it fondly, but after letting more than a decade pass without watching any more than the subway train chase that leads into the final act, I was stunned.

First, on a technical level, it holds up. Some of the special effects are better than others, but if CGI has improved since then it hasn’t improved much. If anything, the CGI in Spider-Man 2, still being somewhat experimental in 2004, is better integrated. And having been shot on 35mm film by a great cinematographer, the movie looks wonderful—even on the old DVD my son and I watched, the warmth of the color palette in scenes with Aunt May or Mary Jane and the palpable coolness of nighttime scenes look wonderfully filmic. None of the recent Marvel movies, which all have the dull, lusterless clarity of digital cinematography, can compare.

I could praise other aspects as well: the acting (from all but James Franco, anyway), or the perfectly balanced tone, or the meticulously structured script, or the obvious fun Sam Raimi is having throughout with snap-zooms and histrionic open-mouthed screams from bystanders.

But what stuck out most to me was the richness of its themes. On top of everything else, this is a legitimately moving drama. The film opens with Peter Parker struggling to fulfil his obligations in every aspect of his life except his role as a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and his frustration grows as he loses the respect of an admired teacher, loses his job, loses an old friend, and seems set to lose Mary Jane forever. He briefly gives up his crime-fighting and, though gaining superficial success in the rest of his life, he can neither win Mary Jane back nor escape the feeling that he is not following his calling.

Spider-Man 2 dares to suggest that vocation and duty are more important than following dreams, and that doing the right thing might mean abandoning a cherished hope.

This underlies two points of grace in the story. First, when trying to earn a living and succeed at school and provide for Aunt May and win Mary Jane back on his own strength he fails, but by embracing his duty as Spider-Man he finds fulfilment and love. As much as we might desire autonomy and individual success and wish to escape duty, it is duty that most powerfully connects us to other people and gives everything else in life meaning. To paraphrase CS Lewis, when Peter aims at happiness he doesn’t get it, but when he aims at duty he gets happiness thrown in.

Second—and this is only a half-formed observation—I was struck that the turning point in the film comes not during an action scene, but in a quiet dining room conversation in which Peter tells Aunt May the truth about the night Uncle Ben was killed. Peter does so despite the discomfort of facing his lies and the petty desire for revenge that contributed to Uncle Ben’s death, and despite the risk of losing Aunt May. She forgives Peter, but not because he deserved it. This feels awfully close to the sacrament of confession. Certainly Peter’s life is more characterized by grace afterward than it was before.

After watching Spider-Man 2 I went to the kitchen to make lunch for myself and my son and idly looked up the late Roger Ebert’s review. Four stars, introduced with this wonderful paragraph:

Now this is what a superhero movie should be. “Spider-Man 2” believes in its story in the same way serious comic readers believe, when the adventures on the page express their own dreams and wishes. It’s not camp and it’s not nostalgia, it’s not wall-to-wall special effects and it’s not pickled in angst. It’s simply and poignantly a realization that being Spider-Man is a burden that Peter Parker is not entirely willing to bear.

It’s striking that, this early in the superhero movie glut, a year before Batman Begins and four years before Iron Man, Ebert accurately described the overwhelming majority of superhero movies to come, whether the CGI vomit of the later MCU or the mordant navel-gazing of Zack Snyder, and exactly what it is that set Spider-Man 2 apart. Better artistry, certainly, but serious and sincerely explored themes of duty and love as well.

It seems trite to point out, but it’s impossible to imagine such a movie being made today.