Going back: moving forward 6: Renaissance woman enjoys life-long learning

Editor’s note: The Aztec Press presents its award-winning series from Fall 2009. This series, “Going back: moving forward,” tells the stories of nontraditional students who have returned to school—some after a few years, others after many. “Going back: moving forward” won first place for Feature Writing in the Society of Professional Journalists regional 2-year/community college category. It reached the top three nationally, to become a nationalist finalist.

Story by Liza Porter
Photo by Daniel Gaona

Lynda Gibson’s wanderlust keeps her trying new things. It all comes down to books and learning.

And writing, history, art, scholarship, travel.

Gibson is a renaissance woman.

Raised in a military family, Gibson lived in Europe and all over the United States, including Hawaii.

As an adult, she’s lived in New Mexico, Texas and California. She eventually settled in Arizona, where she graduated from high school. She has been to England, and on cruises to both Alaska and Greece.

“I love history,” Gibson says. She got to see some of the Greek islands and ancient ruins. “Going to Knossos on Crete was just wonderful.”

Gibson retired in 2003 from Tucson Unified School District, where she taught high school English and was an elementary school librarian. She then taught part-time at Pima for several years. She’s been taking classes at Pima for many years.

This semester she’s enrolled in an art history class at Downtown Campus.

“I love the class,” Gibson says. “And sitting next to me in class is a girl who remembered me as her librarian when she was in elementary school.” Gibson gets a kick out of that.

“I frequently run into former students. It’s nice because now they all like me,” she jokes.

She likes to think she instilled a love of learning in some of her students.

“I’ve also taken a curating class, working out of the Bernal Gallery,” she says. The Bernal is Pima’s art gallery in the Center for the Arts complex on West Campus.

“I’ve taken digital photography. I took the beginning design class, Art 100 or whatever it is. I learned so much in that. I like experimenting with origami, paper folding,” she adds. “And fiber art. Mixed media, that sort of thing.”

It makes sense that someone with Gibson’s education would have such eclectic interests. She earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Arizona State University, and her master’s in library science at University of Arizona.

She has also done graduate work in several fields, including folklore. She has an education specialist degree in educational administration.

Gibson has taken many of the writing classes offered at Pima, including short story, poetry and creative nonfiction. She has written a novel.

“It’s one of the most deserving of staying in the bottom drawer novels that you’re ever going to see.” Gibson laughs.

She’s writing short stories now, and calls it great discipline since a good short story must be concise.

What has she not done that she still would like to do?

“I want to become the Great American Writer and I haven’t done that yet. I’d like to run a marathon.” She laughs again. Becoming an award-winning French chef is also on the list.

“One thing I am going to do is get back to my violin. I still have it. I just haven’t played in years. I realized that I miss it.”

Gibson belongs to a book club that reads mostly novels. It saddens her that most of the independent book stores in Tucson have closed—the Bookmark, the Haunted Bookshop. “I loved the Bookmark.”

She doesn’t think she’ll jump onto the electronic Kindle bandwagon—she likes to hold an actual book in her hands—and she doesn’t think books will go away any time soon.

She still frequents Antigone Books and the Bookstop on Fourth Avenue, as well as the two big chain stores, Barnes & Noble and Borders.

“They’re full of people,” Gibson says. “That’s a good sign.”

She doesn’t approve of people pirating books from the Internet. She argued with a friend once, who thought it was perfectly OK.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Gibson says, sarcastically, “but authors need to make money, that’s why they sell these things.”

She does download books from the Gutenberg Project Web site (www.gutenberg.org), a cooperative project that scans books with expired copyrights onto the Web.

“They add them constantly,” Gibson says. The only problem she’s found is that if the book is a translation, you can’t be sure which one you’re getting.

Some translations are hard to read because English has changed so much over the centuries. The newer translations won’t be on Gutenberg yet because they’re still copyrighted.

Gibson’s favorite writer is Terry Pratchett, a British author of the “Discworld” science fiction series.

“This is fantasy, where magic works,” Gibson says. “This disk sits on top of, is held up by, four enormous elephants who stand on the shell of a turtle. A great turtle that swims through space.”

The series is comedy satire, Gibson says. “It’s almost all satire. And he is a very funny writer.”

Plus, it feeds her wanderlust.

What better place to travel than in space?

Originally published December 1, 2009

1: Single parent makes college a priority
2: Work at Orphanage Provides Inspiration
3: Self Taught ‘techie’ re-engineers himself
4: Life ‘controlled chaos’ for military student
5: Retiree takes classes just for pleasure
7: Journalist switching careers to teaching