The Retirement of Susan Fales
There are strange things done down on Level One
By the women who digitize;
Those who curate sometimes work too late
With their Lasik-sharpened eyes;
The Northern Wing has seen many a thing,
But the strangest of all the tales
Was a day of woe in old Provo:
The retirement of Susan Fales.
Now Susan at least was from Back East, and knew Massachusetts best;
Why she left her home in the East to roam in the desert, only she knows best.
She lived in this land of salt and sand and kept her feelings in check,
Though she'd often say in her homesick way that "she'd sooner live in heck."
When day by day she would study her way through the courses at Utah State,
The mystery of history became her lifelong fate.
Though she was an Ag, the time would drag unless she could study the past;
And the British Isles brought her great big smiles, so she learned that history fast.
Now you see there was a very just cause for her love of the Greenwich Mean,
For the English bug lay deep and snug right within her very own genes:
The maternal side really did reside in the city of Ashford in Kent,
A proper noun describing a town where the missionaries were sent.
So take a good gander at one Elder Anderson and at the diary
He wrote while tracting, from when he was acting as a British missionary:
If you will look through to page 82, you will there see digitized
The good Clifford name and their daughter, the same the family has long prized.
But I do digress, and so now I guess it's time to get back to Ms. Fales,
We will skip the years full of sweat and tears when her resumé blanches and pales;
For she did this and that as a bureaucrat for more than one junior college:
I am not speaking ill when I say we all thrill she rejoined the pathway of knowledge.
Her praises were sung here at Brigham Young, as she studied librarianship
And in '73 with a Masters Degree her career started on one grand trip,
But when I say "trip," I don't mean a slip that plants the floor flat on your face,
No, no, what I mean is the journey that's seen as professional wisdom and grace.
Look what a career she built year by year, though at first it was all analog;
Articles and books and scholarly nooks were the realm of this fine pedagogue;
She built up collections and made cool connections for the good of the library's sake.
Much she has written of Saints in Great Britain, and she published a book with Chad Flake.
But with talent comes nerve, and we saw Susan swerve from the Light to the Dark Side, you know:
Recessive the trait to administrate (AUL in the old ULO),
Where she used her charms to mitigate harms that proceed from strategic planning,
Until sanity told her to break free and to set about digital scanning.
So she tied her rope to the Trails of Hope, and to history that's local;
As she strongly cast the digital past with a faith that's true and vocal.
Now scholarly stations in foreign nations display documents that are Mormon,
So we give Susan thanks as she enters the ranks of retirees now having more fun.
From London to Leeds nobody succeeds like Susan Fales when she's reading,
From breakfast to dinner she turns up a winner, for Susan Fales by succeeding.
It's said around here with a voice soft and clear that "Charity never faileth."
Despite her last name, we'll tell you the same: Susan ruleth and prevaileth!
Just list to her laughter and please tell her afterward what a good job she has done;
With voice so sincere, speak into her ear, giving praise for the victory won…
With your feet on the floor, just point to the door, instructing our brave erstwhile chum,
"The exit's discreet, but as you retreat, don't let it strike you on the bum."
So here she sits now, taking one last bow, in the depths of our Info Silo;
And she wears a smile you could see a mile, and she says: "Farewell, for I know
That it's fine in here, but I greatly fear, that I've finally acquiesced -
Since I left, alas, my home state of Mass., it's the first I've been able to rest."
There are strange things done down on Level One
By the women who digitize;
Those who curate sometimes work too late
With their Lasik-sharpened eyes;
The Northern Wing has seen many a thing,
But the strangest of all the tales
Was a day of woe in old Provo:
The retirement of Susan Fales.
Dick Hacken, 30 January 2008
With apologies to Robert Service, Sam McGee, and the Northern Lights.