November 11, 2004

    Yesterday, before the champagne dinner (there is now a frozen half-bottle of champagne in our freezer--PAR-TAY!) and the candlelight bubble bath (I am such a girl sometimes), I was in such a hormonal hissy fit that everything made me cry.  All. Day. Long.  Traffic made me cry, my hair made me cry, customers made me cry, my boss's Beach Boy's Greatest Hits CD made me cry.

    Today, only one thing made me cry.

    I actually got the news via email, before checking my blogs.  It's taken a while to sink in. 

    It's not that I can't believe that Guller passed away.  Feisty as he was, the man was no spring chicken.

    But it seems so hard to believe that someone like him could actually die.  A large part of me is thinking "Nah, he's bluffing!"

    Professor Guller was one of my early introductions to the quality present in all excellent college professors: Perspective.  Deep, profound, perspective.  For Guller, this perspective came from the study of The Classics.  Which ones, I'm not sure--for as far as I could tell he was an expert on all of them. 

    Professor Guller was everything a professor should be, and everything an English professor should be.  As his student, I admired and adored him, but I don't think I had the perspective at the time to realize what a truly, unusually special man he was.

    He will be missed.