A Sarasota Christmas Carol

Rocco (“Coco”) Campbell stood on the pier of the Sarasota bayfront college over Christmas vacation, looking not out at the gorgeous sunset or what the slow tide brought in, but back at the campus grounds awaiting his 50-point master improvement plan. If they tore down a grove of banyan trees, he spied with his little eye, they could make room for a third baseball field for high school students from the local classical charter school to play on the college grounds.

“Stay hungry. Stay foolish,” Coco whispered to himself, repeating the words of the late Apple founder & CEO Steve Jobs.

Running a college was long a dream for the politically-connected Florida hustler who made his fortune in the private-equity business buying up homes to convert into vacation rentals. Business was booming, especially after the pandemic.

“Why vacation in Sarasota when you can live, work, and play baseball, I mean, study — here in paradise?” he mused to himself.

A brand-new marketing strategy for the struggling college was born.

And, with the help of a new board of university trustees appointed by an old friend, he was at the precipice of making it all happen. He had just been handed the keys to the kingdom, and he was fit to rule.

He was imagining how his Wikipedia page would look in the future (“Titan of vacation titles, colossal of classical education”) when his reverie was interrupted by a young couple on the beach selling Christmas candy canes who were calling out to passers by. With their mussy hair and youthful appearance, they looked like students.

“Harumph,” Coco grumbled.

Coco personally checked over every business license awarded on campus. Every penny, every sheckel, every piece of political wampum — his eyes passed over how it would be used. He knew this couple did not have any right to sell peppermint sweets by the seashore.

“Wait! Stop it, you two!”

Coco began to amble over to the couple when his sandaled foot struck a boulder.

Thwap!

Coco was down for the count. Minutes passed. When he came to and looked up from the sandy shores, he saw a dazzling Angel of David before him. The light nearly blinded him.

“I am the Archangel David of Sarasota! Heed my message!”

Coco’s lower jaw trembled. Other than when he had set up his personal home movie theater for a special solo screening of the Steve Jobs biopic, he had never beheld such awe and radiance in human-ish personage so big and so close before.

David’s perfect visage looked as if had been chiseled by a Renaissance master. He was also completely naked. David’s wings fluttered, bathing him in light and shadow amidst the setting sun in the distance.

A thunderbolt clapped.

The sky suddenly darkened, rain started to pour, and the candy cane-selling couple fled.

“Rocco Campbell, listen to me! I am the Archangel David of Sarasota, the guardian of the bay and all these blessed sands. Your university board of trustees will be visited by three ghosts. When they come back to you, you must follow their every command. Things will be different. Try to help.”

Then David disappeared, leaving Coco on the shore alone. His clothes were drenched. He passed out again.

Scene One — The Ghost of Christmas Past

When Donna Jo Michaelson tucked herself into bed that night, she hugged herself close to her MyPillow. Christmas was always one of the hardest times of year, ever since she lost her husband and two dogs in the same year in a tragic fire at their house ten years ago.

She numbed herself to the pain by throwing herself into her work as an accountant keeping the books for Rocco Campbell’s vacation rental empire. She was thrilled when both of them got a boost from their friend, the governor, when he appointed her to the board of her alma mater to be a trustee.

She and her team of fellow new trustees had made quick work of dismantling the famously progressive school and transforming it according to Coco’s vision — a small, classical university bursting with sports — baseball, cricket, curling, bass fishing, squash, Olympic Tug of War, e-sports, snowshoeing, downhill skiing, and waterskiing.

If Coco could dream it, Donna Jo could build it. She shivered with inspiration whenever he quoted Steve Jobs.

Her eyes also lit up with dollar signs — “Just think what this will mean for our vacation rentals in the area when all these parents come to watch their little darlings compete! Ka-ching!”

Just as Donna Jo could see a vision of her portfolio growing fatter, a bright light surrounded her whole room. She clutched closer to her MyPillow.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past,” intoned a somber-looking apparition of a hunched man with a cane. “I want to show you something,” he said.

She suddenly was teleported to the window of her college dorm room, at least where it once stood, before it was demolished for the new college master improvement plan.

“Take a gander,” said the Ghost. “Do you remember these two?”

Donna Jo peered in the window. She saw a younger version of herself, with her long ponytail, yellow tank top, and jean shorts. She was in a steamy state of embrace with her first boyfriend, a fellow economics major. They had been talking about their senior theses and she remembers how their mutual thirst for knowledge led to their mutual hunger for the flesh.

Donna Jo grasped at her side, where she hoped her MyPillow would be. It was gone.

“Whatever happened to him?” She looked at the Ghost. “God, I loved Brad so much. I wonder where he is today.”

“Let me show you!” the Ghost replied.

Suddenly Donna Jo was transported to a new window, outside a modest home in the Boston suburbs. Brad was celebrating Christmas with his wife, Janine, and their two kids, a boy and a girl. Three puppies played by the Christmas tree.

Donna Jo pressed her ear to the window to listen.

“Can you believe what Donna Jo did to our alma mater? I can’t believe I ever dated her. She belongs in the alumni hall of shame. I’m going to start editing her Wikipedia page tonight. Let posterity record!”

Donna Jo hung her head and collapsed. It was so good to see Brad, for just a moment, but she couldn’t bear leaving it like this. She wanted to knock on the door, to explain Steve Jobs to him, how Coco had a vision, but instead she just looked up sadly at the Ghost again.

“Wait, Donna Jo. Your time will come again. You’ll have another chance.” The Ghost put his bony arm around her. She was teleported back to her bed.

Scene Two — The Ghost of Christmas Present

Trustee Edwin Sapphire, with cool blue-amethyst eyes, said his Christmas prayers at the church service, sang some carols, and was about to head home when he was confronted right in the narthex of the church by a ghost, right in front of his speechless wife.

“I’m the Ghost of Christmas Present, Edwin,” the ghost announced herself. “It’s time to come with me, as I have something to show you. Your wife will be waiting for you when you return.”

Edwin looked at his wife, who was frozen. “Spirit, lead me on,” said Edwin. He had been waiting for this moment his whole life. But what he was to find was not what he expected.

The Ghost teleported him to behind a shaggy Brazilian peppertree bush with bright red berries (so Christmaslike!) outside a trailer home.

A middle-aged woman opened the trailer door for her daughter, Alyssa, and her daughter’s boyfriend Tony so she could welcome them for the Christmas feast she picked up from Boston Market. Allison, the mother, had grown to love her new place in her community of manufactured homes in the Sarasota exurbs, but Alyssa chafed at her lack of private space. She had to share a bathroom and shower, and had no place she could be alone with Tony. Edwin could hear them complaining.

The family could no longer live in Sarasota after she got priced out of her neighborhood near the college that Alyssa attended. All the new vacation rentals, plus the rising cost of property insurance, meant that there was no room at the inn for people like them.

“How did the candy cane sales go today?” asked mother Allison. “Have you made enough for your textbooks next semester yet?”

“Rotten,” Alyssa said glumly. “The new student athletes have great appetites, but they don’t have a taste for the finer things in life, if you know what I mean.”

“Nothing finer than Christmas!” piped up Tony, peeling off the wrapper of a candy cane.

“Oh, momma,” sighed Alyssa. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to pay for your cancer surgery either, let alone my textbooks. I wish I had never gotten fired from my job in the college admissions office. I know that I was wearing a Pride pin, I won’t deny that, and I won’t deny I had some candy canes in my satchel to sell as well, but…”

“Honey, we’ll find a way,” soothed her mother, cutting her off.

The Ghost of Christmas Present looked at Edwin and beamed him up right back beside his stunned wife. Edwin was shaken and confused. He needed to sleep to make sense of — what had he just seen? And why?

Scene Three — Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

Trustee Martin Bruckheimer sipped at his home-brewed beer as he sat by the fire. He stoked the fire by throwing in copies of books expunged from the college library he suddenly had new oversight power over— titles about anti-racism, imperialism, and “women’s lib” books that were so popular with the coeds these days. Also lots and lots of graphic novels — he could just not abide the lack of literary sophistication in young people these days.

“They think in pictures, not words. Can we even really call them men and women?” He sneered at the students in his mind.

He would have called them Neanderthals, if only he believed in evolution.

Suddenly something crashed in his window. A glowing spirit kneeled from where he had fallen amidst shards of glass on the floor.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Martin. I have something to show you! If you don’t change your path, this could happen to you!”

Martin and the Ghost were engulfed in a great whirlwind and spirited away. When they touched down, Martin could feel the concrete beneath his Christmas slippers.

“Where are we?” Martin asked.

The Ghost held up his Apple watch which flashed the time and date in bright green: “Midnight, December 25, 2033, Sarasota standard time.”

Then the Ghost pointed to a sign above the concrete: “Kamala Harris International Airport Cell-Phone Waiting Lot.”

“What??!” Martin sputtered. “What is this gibberish you are showing me? This looks like just the spot where we had the college ballfields. I can recall seeing the bayfront just over yonder so.”

“This college you oversee,” the Ghost explained, “got taken over by the airport once the academic program collapsed and the school lost its accreditation. When the Democrats won the Florida governorship, they stacked the new airport board with cronies who named the airport in honor of the 48th president and, well, the rest is history.”

“WHAT?? How could that happened??” Bruckheimer looked panicked. “Wait, could you — on your watch — look up what has happened to my Wikipedia page? Can you see what people are saying about me?”

The Ghost asked Siri, his faithful watch spirit, for the information query. But Siri returned no results.

“I guess they’ve all forgotten about you,” said the Ghost.

“I… I can’t believe it!”

“This is your fate, Martin,” said the Ghost, “unless you change the path you are on.”

Scene Four — College Board of Trustees Meeting, January 2024

Five members of the college board of trustees had been visited over the Christmas by some apparition. They looked uneasy and fidgeted as Board Chair Donna Jo called the meeting to order.

Rocco Campbell gave them a report about how the college was doing. He was asking for more time with his master plan. And he was quoting Steve Jobs again: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

“Rocco,” called out one of the new trustees. “Actually, I did have an insight into where the future of this college is going. It came to me with the Spirit of Christmas and we need to change our ways.”

Rocco recalled his revelation from the Archangel David of Sarasota. “Try to help,” David had said.

“How can I help you,” said Rocco.

Finally, they were ready to think about a new foundation of education for a college that had lost its way.

“Let’s bring back the thesis requirement and make sure we have the highest possible academic standards!” exclaimed Trustee Donna Jo Michaelson, glowing.

“Let’s give scholarships to only the best admitted candidates and give special financial aid to local students from the surrounding community!” shouted Trustee Edwin Sapphire.

“Let’s invite all the alumni back to campus so they can have a big graduation party with the current students! I know just who to invite to speak at the ceremony!” enthused Trustee Martin Bruckheimer.

Scene Five — Commencement Day

On the college’s commencement day that year, Coco stepped aside and let the commencement mistress of ceremonies, who made the unusual request to bring her cat, greet every graduating student by looking them in eye with a handshake. Some students fainted when they had the opportunity to meet mega-celebrity Taylor Swift.

“I’ve been through my Eras, just like this college has,” Taylor explained, “which is why I wanted to meet you all. You have a such a special place here. Never let that feeling of excitement of being a learner go away. Always hold fast to your dreams and your fearless pursuit of knowledge. We are all, in the end, responsible for our own education.”

The students hushed as the commencement speaker rose to give her address. As Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave a rousing speech about diversity and opportunity, the trustees reflected on how they had been lucky to have a visit of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come — and realize that their time on earth had been one of many blessings.

Alyssa’s mom was in the crowd, beaming with pride at her daughter’s graduation. She wasn’t sure Alyssa — or herself — would make it. But there she was, recovering from her cancer surgery. She got the money to pay for it when Alyssa got one of the new scholarships, her admissions job back, and she and Tony started a new pop-up business on campus, “College Holiday Treats” — designed for both the new students and tourists nearby at the vacation rentals.

Well, some things never change. But the Christmas spirit had touched them all.