I became friends with Linda McCloskey in 1999, the semester I arrived at OU. One of the first things I noticed about her was how kind and generous and welcoming she was. But I also noticed how passionately she cared about her students. Over the years, I came to realize that Linda was probably the best-loved teacher I’ve ever met. That's saying a lot because we at OU are extraordinarily lucky in the students we get to teach -- they are some of the most caring, loyal, generous, humble, and appreciative people I know. And I've been around a lot of universities and colleges over the years.
What the students here at OU recognized was that Linda was one of them in a fundamental way. I think it had to do with growing up here in Michigan. Linda and OU students are all connected to this part of the world in a way that I can only admire, not truly understand. As Annie Dillard says in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here.”
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Another Linda Tale
told by Annie Gilson