Sinsull, that is tragic - the last memory of a friend should be of a happy time. (That's why I never go up to view the body at open casket funerals.) I hope you can share stories with others and all come out with a better mental image.

gnu, it is five months since they hit the "reset" button at work, with the new dean playing favorites and treating us like checkers on a board, jumping people over others without consideration of qualifications or job experience. The job I created over the years, duties added by me or suggested by my boss as the need was perceived, there are now four people doing that job as a marketing department. Guess who had to train them, and hand over huge amounts of information and files? I still get questions about how to do stuff. Why am I not there? Because my MA is in English, not an MLS, but for this job the MLS is not necessary. The job description lists everything I did but has two extra words: "librarian preferred." I'm now in the basement preparing to digitize old analog recordings and to sort through institutional repository data dumps to determine what photos were put in (without the proper metadata.) I reported to the dean personally for 16 years and now I'm in the basement, out of sight, out of mind. Just visualize the guy in Peabody's Improbable History sweeping up after the horses.

SRS