Ghosts of December Past

Yesterday had some strange reminders of the past, specifically of my last full-time job at City College, where I was Director of Education and then Campus Director.  It's not the more famous City College in New York, but a career college that offers degrees in health fields, and once had 5 physical campuses across Florida, plus an online campus.  

Just after lunch yesterday, my cell phone rang, which is odd.  It was from the City of Hollywood, even stranger.

I answered the call, expecting it to be some sort of alert attached to a former house.  Instead, it was the fire marshal who was trying to update records and asking me which floors of the building that the campus used.

It took my brain some time to catch up, and for a brief moment, I couldn't remember what used to be true.  It doesn't really matter.  I haven't been part of the campus since early 2022--I know what was planned, but many things were planned during the time that the new owners took over, and many of those plans changed radically.  I looked up the campus phone number on the website, explained the situation to the fire marshal, and gave her the phone number.  I refrained from any of the editorializing I might have done.

I wanted to give the fire marshal the phone number of the current owners, but I could not for the life of me remember the name of the Brooklyn school that bought City College.  I still can't.  I know how I could look it up, but it's strange not to be able to pull it up from my memory.

Later in the day, my spouse and I went to Highlands Brewery.  It was a pleasant afternoon in terms of temperature and clear skies, and it might be awhile before it's warmish like that again.  The place was decorated for winter holidays.  I looked up and recognized the stars/snowflakes hanging from the ceiling.  Back in 2021, there were two people working full time on the campus of City College, and the new owners sent decorations for the campus.  

That was back when there were still 5 campuses, and Corporate wanted them all decorated the same, all for winter, with no religion-specific holidays.  We were promised magnificent decorations, but what arrived was a craft project--flattened stars/snowflakes, with places that needed to be punched out, and some way that they slotted together.  The first one we did took over half an hour of trying to punch out the perforated parts.  I declared that we wouldn't be doing this for all the stars/snowflakes, as the finished product wasn't that much more beautiful than the non-punched out versions.

We were supposed to hang them from the ceiling, but we didn't have ladders, and even if we did, we were a team of two women in midlife.  I nixed the idea of standing on chairs.  We taped the flat stars to the walls and the strange banner that came.  Where were we supposed to hang this outdoor banner?  We ended up stretching it along an entry wall, the only one big enough to hold its expanse.

I'm glad that yesterday I recognized those decorations as we were about to leave the brewery.  It plunged me into a bit of sadness about how the new owners treated us all.  When I feel this sadness about the past, I feel sad about feeling sad:  after all, I am much happier now, with a more relaxed life that's more affordable, so why am I sad?  Why don't I just focus on feeling fortunate at being set free?  It's complicated.

I have spent some time this morning looking back on my December 2021 blog entries--that job was even more bizarre than I remembered, and I remembered some bizarre incidents.  I had forgotten about the landlord deciding that the elevator was broken and couldn't be repaired, and we were expected to cope with that.  That building made me question everything I thought I knew about the ADA and compliance and codes and such.  I'm glad that I'm no longer in charge of that campus, overseeing issues where I had no ability to make changes or control the situation.