Belated discovery

There have only been a couple of times in my life that I enjoyed going to school (school here covers kindergarten to the absurd extremes of university). One of those was my first year at seminary, ten years ago. The other was in a number theory course at Michigan Tech in the spring term of 1980. The prof was the venerable Dr. Cleves Byers, now, alas passed on to his reward (1995 I think). The book was Explorations in Number Theory by Jeanne Agnew. I have kept this book all these years, and, from time to time, I go to the book and read it and do problems.

Some years after I took the course (and another independent study with Dr. Byers), I wrote a letter to Dr. Agnew. She replied in a most kindly way. I don't doubt that somewhere in the bowels of some closet the letter is around. With the advent of the web and e-mail, I think I e-mailed the Great Lady, and received a response. That would have been, likely eight or ten years ago.

I was compelled to look her up again last week. When I did, I discovered that she had died in May of 2000. I was sorry to think that I'd waited so long to contact her again. However, when someone dies, one is likely to find out more about a life than when that person is still living. Her accomplishments were many in her years at Oklahoma State University. In the end, though, her greatest accomplishments were the ones I knew about all along: she was a great teacher, and wrote one of my favourite books.

Jeanne Agnew was born not far from here, in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in Port Arthur (those of us who are old enough remember when Thunder Bay was the two cities of Port Arthur and Fort William). The cover of her book had a picture of a nearby landmark, Ouimet Canyon.

Life is full of regrets. People who say the have none are either self-delusional, have bad memories, or are amoral. My mother always said to us that the worst sins were not sins of commission, but sins of omission: that is, not the things we do, but the things we should have done. Life is short, even lives as long as the one led by Jeanne Agnew.

On other fronts, I'm discovering Norwegian music, which is to say the music of my ethnic heritage (on my father's side), and I'm writing a piece for piccolo and double bass. It's fun to explore music at the edges.