Mamacita says:  This is my favorite Picasso*, and it hangs in the foyer of my home. I’ve loved it for many years; a copy hung in the men’s side of my college dorm, (I still love you, Willkie Co-op!)  and it used to fascinate me. The print.  The print fascinated me. It just happened to hang in the lounge of the men’s dorm.  I loved seeing it there.  The print.  No, wait, I mean. . .oh heck. (Um, somebody told me it was there.) (It was the MEN’S dorm! Why would I sneak want to go in there?) (I mean, you had to know how to pick the lock of the side door!)

Ahem. Well, moving right along. . . . I love Don Quixote de la Mancha. I love his unfailing insistence that life IS beautiful, even when it is at its most un-beautiful. I love the way he tilted at windmills. I love the language, the grammar, the turn-of-phrase. I love the use of the word “tilted.” I love “The Impossible Dream,” although when Jim Nabors sings it, I can’t look.

I love how he, like Pippa**, passes, and the mere fact of his passing changes the lives of almost everyone who encounters him merely by his ontological presence. He passes through, and everyone he touches is better. He doesn’t change people on purpose; he merely is what he is, and suddenly – or gradually – others become what they should be instead of what they actually were.

He speaks; he acts; those who listen are improved; the world is better for it.

I think this is what good teachers do.

*It’s not the ORIGINAL, for heaven’s sake! It’s just a framed poster, but I love it.

**Bonus points if you know who Pippa was.