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�On St. Augustine
ugustine’s life and works reflect intellectual rigor, curiosity,
STJOHN’S
and a desire to see beyond the surface of things to find real
understanding. Driven by a restlessness that at times turned
College
to self-loathing, he engaged in a relentless quest with many a
SANTA
wrong turn and dead end. He was determined to distinguish
“the charm of words from the truth of things,” as he writes in the
The College (usps 018-750)
Augustine was born
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in 354. in
Confessions.
thought
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is published quarterly by
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Known office of publication:
rhetoric. He went to Rome and then Milan to teach rhetoric, and did well in his
Communications Office
St. John’s College
public life, seeking out applause and recognition for his talents. He saw rhetoric as a
Box a8oo
way to “conquer” others, but ultimately, his success as a great orator gave him no
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
real satisfaction.
Periodicals postage paid
His search for wisdom led him to the Manichaean religion, which ultimately
at Annapolis, MD
disappointed him with empty answers to his questions. “Nearly nine years passed in
postmaster: Send address
which I wallowed in the mud of that deep pit and in the darkness of falsehood, striving
changes to The College
often to rise, but being all the more heavily dashed down,” he writes in Book Three.
Magazine, Communications
His restlessness and dissatisfaction led him to the works of Plato and Plotinus.
Office, St. John’s College,
Box
2800, Annapolis, MD
He found a harmony between Christian belief and neoplatonism that paved the way
21404-2800.
for his eventual conversion. In 387, at the age of 33, and on Holy Saturday, Augustine
Rosemary Harty, editor
was baptized. His mother, St. Monica, never gave up on him.
Patricia Dempsey,
Soon afterward he returned to Tagaste, where he lived a monastic life. In 391, while
managing editor
he was visiting in Hippo, he became a priest. For the rest of his life he remained in
John Hartnett (SF83),
Santa Fe editor
Hippo, where he became auxiliary bishop in 395 and bishop soon after. He died in
Jennifer Behrens, art director
430, as the Vandals lay siege to Hippo, and he spent his last days reading in his
library.
Annapolis
410-626-2539
His Confessions (written in his 40s) is considered a classic of Christian autobiogra
phy, as well as a compelling account of one man’s intellectual and spiritual journey.
Santa Fe
He spent 13 years writing The City of God, which he finished in 426.
505-984-6104
Sophomores at St. John’s read from the Hebrew scriptures and from classical
Contributors
Roman poetry and history before moving on to Augustine, Aquinas, and Anselm.
Jason Bielagus (SF98)
In the reading list today, Aristotle’s On the Soul serves as a bridge between the great
Barbara Goyette (A73)
shifts of thought occurring between Roman and medieval times. “Augustine was a
Andra Maguran
man caught between two worlds: that of paganism and Christianity, of being a
Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
believer and a nonbeliever,” says Brother Robert Smith, Annapolis tutor. “In the
Erica Naone (A05)
Libby Vega (SF06)
Confessions, he works that all out, and all the moral problems that are connected with
Roseanna White (A05)
that. Besides that, he’s a very good writer.”
A
ANNAPOLIS •
FE
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�{Contents}
PAGE
IO
DEPARTMENTS
St. Augustine
a
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
How should we think about the concept
of sin? Does the average person really
have the capacity for evil? Augustine
scholar Kim Paffenroth (A88) offers
perspective on the Confessions.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Faculty study groups
Making Johnnies out of GIs
A new vice president in Santa Fe
Opportunity Initiative
Enterprising Greek scholars
A garden grows in Annapolis
New tutors
9
LETTERS
PAGE
l8
Commencement 2005
16 ALUMNI VOICES
In Annapolis, one speaker imagines
Callicles as the perfect commencement
speaker; in Santa Fe, another tells
graduates that great riches lie beyond
the land of the Phaiacians.
PAGE
A Johnnie way of life-only different.
a8 STUDENT VOICES
Through photography, Donald Stone
(A06) helps teens find their own paths.
30 BIBLIOFILE
2121
A Long
A new two-volume history by Joseph
Baratta (A69) explores the world
federalism movement.
Time Coming
In her years away from St. John’s, Peggy
O’Shea (SF87) sold BMWs. Nick Colten
(A97) worked as a baker. Ultimately,
their paths brought them full circle.
PAGE
3a ALUMNI NOTES
PROFILES
32 Antiques Roadshow’s Peter Fairbanks
(A73) knows the real McCoy.
36 An island of her own: Sarah Mara (A61)
and life on Lone Pine.
38 Kira Zielinski (SF95) takes to the skies.
42 Chris P. Nelson (SF99)-blogging his way
to fame and fortune.
2Zj.
Homecoming
A birthday party for Eastern Classics,
Shakespeare in action, and a new
president in Santa Fe make for a lively
Homecoming.
46 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
48 ST. John’s forever
PAGE a4
ON THE COVER
Augustine ofHippo
Illustration by DavidJohnson
�2.
{From
the
Bell Towers}
Faculty Study Groups
Sustaining the Life ofthe Mind
Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses is
one of the most famous passages of modern literature, with the
final few lines punctuated by the repetition of the word “yes”:
. Iput my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so
he couldfeel my breasts allperfume yes and his heart was going
like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. ”
As he prepared for a faculty study group meeting on the novel
last July, Santa Fe tutor David Carl planned to play a recording of
an actress reading part of the soliloquy. “My opening question
will be, ‘what is Molly saying yes to?’” Carl explained. “The book
is about the Blooms’ marital problems, her infidelity, the death
of their child, and there are a lot of things that have been said no
to. But she’s affirming something at the end of book, and I’d like
to hear thoughts from the group.”
Carl was actually a bit surprised to find him
self leading an eight-week faculty study group
on Ulysses. He had proposed War and Peace,
but the Instruction Committee had settled on
Joyce, and he gamely accepted. “It’s a very
difficult book,” he says of Ulysses. “But it’s
been fun, because talking about it out loud
helps sort out the meaning.”
Faculty study groups have been a part of
sustaining the intellectual life of St. John’s
tutors since the New Program was established
in 1937. Groups of 4-12 tutors meet under a
variety of circumstances, reading and working
through a variety of texts, both Program and
non-Program. This kind of study is important
to tutors: it enables them to think in-depth
about a certain subject or
book, when their normal
teaching schedule calls
them to cover material
more quickly; it helps them
consider proposed changes to
the Program; and it helps
them prepare to teach in
areas of the curriculum
where they may not have
much experience.
This past summer, about 25
faculty members in Santa Fe
took part in five funded study
groups. In Annapolis, 43 fac
ulty members took part in six
funded groups. (On both campuses, several tutors took part in
more than one group.) Because it is such an essential part of
keeping St. John’s a true community of learners, faculty development-as it is often called in the academic world-is among the
college’s most important strategic goals. To allow more tutors
to take part, the college has been seeking-and finding, from
entities such as the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation,
the A.W. Mellon Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute-outside funding for study groups.
A grant supported the Ulysses study group, and Carl was
gratified to be paid for the time and effort he put into leading the
group. “In the Nichomacean Ethics, we read that a life of study
and contemplation is the happiest life a human being can lead,”
he says. “Tutors really believe that, and if
that’s what you believe, surely someone
doesn’t have to offer you money. On the other
hand, leading a group is time consuming, and
it turns out the compensation is pretty gener
ous. That helped because of all the things that
turn out not to be a part of the life of the mind,
but still matter-like rent and insurance.”
Spontaneous and informal study groups
spring up frequently at St. John’s, says
Santa Fe Dean David Levine (A67). However,
on a practical level, funded study groups
allow tutors to be released from their teaching
schedule. “Now that we have the financial
support, it means that tutors can concentrate
on a study group in ways they haven’t been
able to before,” he says. “We’re working
Supportingfaculty
development
is one ofthe
colleges most
important
strategic goals.
Thursday afternoon with
Joyce: Santa Fe faculty
MEMBERS (l. to R. ) BoB
Richardson, David Carl,
AND Peter Pesic took on
Ulysses in a summer study
GROUP.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
J
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
3
toward giving tutors more release time to pursue their
his most satisfying experiences has been holding the NEH Chair,
own inquiry.”
which gave him a year off from teaching to study Plato’s Philebus,
Study groups solidify the faculty community and feed tutors
then lead a faculty study group and deliver a lecture on thumos in
with energy and ideas. “At other colleges, faculty study groups
The Republic.
are the icing on the cake, whereas here, they’re a necessity-they
Providing compensation for study groups ensures more oppor
are part of the cake,” says Levine. Because tutors teach across
tunities for all tutors, Dink says. “It levels the playing field to
the curriculum, the college asks “everyone to extend themselves
allow anyone-regardless of financial need-to engage in the study
beyond their area of comfort.”
group,” he says. “Tutors will always want to keep learning. Their
Last summer, Ingo Farin, a Santa Fe tutor since 2002, took part
appetites are not exhausted by the Program.”
in a srx-week mathematics study group led by John Cornell and a
Tutor Erik Sagengwas asked to lead a faculty study group on
two-day session on Einstein’s 1905 paper on Brownian motion,
probability and statistics, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical
led by Peter Pesic. They were both exciting, says Farin, whose
Institute. He spent a year planning, originally expecting to focus
doctoral work was in philosophy. “It’s good to offer study groups
on techniques of statistical analysis, but the study group eventu
for those who are not experts, so they can catch up with what
ally took a more philosophical look at the topic. “I had no idea
more experienced tutors say about the matter,” he says. “But the
that there were so many different and actively debated systems of
primary focus of study groups should be the intellectual focus of
foundations for probability and statistics,” he says. “I found that
tutors. That means that [the groups] go outside the canon of
really interesting and exciting.”
things we teach here. If we don’t do that, there’s a danger we
The group had three two-hour meetings each week for eight
could become experts in the Program.”
weeks. Four members of the group had fund
For that reason, he was pleased to lead a
ing, but one took part without any compensa
study group on “ Todesfuge” (“Death Fugue”)
tion. They read works by Richard von Mises,
by Paul Celan, a Romanian-born poet whose
Karl Popper, F.P. Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti,
parents were killed in the Holocaust and
and John Maynard Keynes. “This particular
who escaped death by working in a Nazi
topic was especially valuable, because it can
labor camp.
bear on how we learn and how we change our
Claudia Honeywell has been on the faculty
opinions in the face of evidence,” Sageng says.
for 12 years and has yet to teach senior labora
WTiile some study groups meet for just one
tory. After completing a study group on the
summer, one Annapolis group has been meet
Michael Dink, Annapolis dean
first half of senior lab, led by Howard Fisher,
ing for 21 years, two hours each week, for eight
she feels that she can approach Faraday,
weeks, to read works in phenomenology.
Millikan, and Rutherford with
They’ve spent years on each
more ease. It was enjoyable to
work, just completing a fiveconduct the experiments with
year exploration of Hans-Georg
her colleagues and talk about
Gadamer’s Truth and Method
the results. “This has really
last summer. The works they
opened up something for me.
Or, don’t. A/oZ>y-7)ZcA:-considered by some to be the great
read may not be on the Pro
When I go into laboratory.
American novel-hasn’t been on the seminar reading list in
gram, but they help us under
I’ll have more confidence,
Annapolis since 1974. It hung on in Santa Fe several years
stand the Program, says tutor
and I’ll feel I can engage the
longer before vanishing. Relegated to preceptorials, the
Jon Lenkowsi, who also took
students,” she says, adding
novel has been replaced in seminar by Benito Cereno.
part in a Donne study group.
with a laugh, “I’m still afraid
Here’s your chance, readers of The College. What should be
“What we do in our classes can
to teach music.”
on the official Reading List of St. John’s that is not there now?
be traced back to some kind of
Annapolis Dean Michael
Joyce’s Ulysses, instead of The Dead? Proust’s Remembrance
phenomenology. We’re always
Dink (A75) still remembers the
of Things Pastl Should we bring back Gibbon’s The Decline
reflecting on our own experi
and Fall ofthe Roman Empire I
study group he participated in
ences and on our own lives,”
Make your case in a few hundred words or less why a par
during his first year as a tutor
he says.
ticular work should be added to the Reading List. Note that
in Annapolis in 1984. “Curtis
Lenkowski is one of the
The College has no sway with the Instruction Committee,
Wilson led a group on the idea
original members of the group,
which decides such things. We invite your suggestions in the
of universal gravitation in
which also comprised John
interest of sparking lively conversation.
Newton’s thought. It made a
White (A65), Sam Kutler
Those whose suggestions end up printed in the Winter
big impression on me.”
(A54), and Debbie Renaut
2006 issue will be rewarded with either an Albert Einstein
Over the years, he’s partici
{A68). The composition of
or Jane Austen action figure (retail value: $8.95). Please
pated in many groups, some
the group has changed from
mail submissions to: Editor, The College, P.O. Box 2800,
with funding, most without.
year to year. “The excitement
Annapolis, MD 2T404-2800. The current reading lists for
Last year, he formed a twocomes in having the leisure
the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses can be found on
person study group with tutor
to do this with like-minded
the college Web site: www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on
Nathan Dugan. The two met
people.”
Academic Program.
once a week to translate
—Rosemary Harty
Genesis from Hebrew. One of
''Tutors will
always want
to keep
learning.
“Call Me Ishmael”
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
�4
{From
the
Bell Towers}
Making Johnnies Out of GIs
At St. John’s new undergradu
ates forge bonds in shared
classes, meals, intramural
sports, and parties. At the
Graduate Institute in Annapolis,
students’ ages range from 22 to
72, they are in different life
stages and careers, and they
can live an hour or more from
campus. But none of that has
stopped Annapolis GI Director
Joan Silver (A76) from launch
ing new initiatives to make
graduate students feel that
they’re part of a wider
community.
“Creating more community
for the GI students both within
the GI itself and within the
college as a whole remains a
challenge,” says Silver, now in
her second year as director.
Energetic, creative, and familiar
with what it’s like to be an older
student in a young population.
Silver has been determined to
make GIs feel like full-fledged
Johnnies. When she came to
St. John’s as a student. Silver
already had a bachelor’s degree.
She ended up becoming a parttime tutor while she finished the
Program, eventually earning a
master of arts from the college.
After earning a doctorate in the
ology, she became a full-time
tutor in Santa Fe in 1989 and
returned to Annapolis in 1996.
There are obstacles to build
ing a community for a diverse
group of students, many of
whom are juggling their studies
with full-time jobs and family
obligations. Silver acknowl
edges. Some attend part time,
and not all can linger late for
regular after-seminar gather
ings on Monday nights. This fall
Silver began inviting each of
the 93 Annapolis GI students to
join her and other students for
lunch or dinner.
Recently, President Chris
Nelson began hosting recep
Broadening the Search
Crystal Watkins grew up in
Annapolis and attended The
Key School, founded by
St. John’s tutors. However,
except for attending an occa
sional event on the campus,
she didn’t know much about
the college. When it came time
to apply to colleges, St. John’s
was not on her list. “It was
totally based on a stereotype,”
she says. “I just didn’t think I’d
fit in.”
Since July, it has been
Watkins’ job to dispel stereo
types about St. John’s. As part
of the college’s Opportunity
Initiative, Watkins joined the
college as admissions counselor
for diversity, sharing regular
admissions duties along with
taking on special initiatives to
introduce St. John’s to minority
students. She will attend col
lege fairs, visit high schools,
and establish relationships with
community groups.
for
In Santa Fe, the college has a
similar initiative, with a special
emphasis on introducing the
college to Hispanic and NativeAmerican students. The goal for
both campuses is to broaden the
college’s recruitment efforts to
ensure that qualified high
tions for graduate stu
dents. Silver is helping
several GIs who are
reviving the Graduate
Council as a way to
foster academic and
social events, while
connecting with the
undergraduate Student
Committee on Instruc
tion. “As a result, we
now have undergradu
ates participating in
our orientation
seminars on the Meno
at the beginning of each
semester,” she says.
Krishnan Venkatesh, director
of the GI in Santa Fe, says the
campus has done much to make
graduate students feel like part
of the community. In Santa Fe,
GIs are invited to attend under
graduate preceptorials, bring
ing the two populations
together in the classroom. This
year, the GI has 71 students in
Joan Silver hopes to
STRENGTHEN THE GI COMMUNITY.
the liberal arts program and 31
in Eastern Classics.
“The GIs usually live and
work about 15 minutes from
campus, so they are able to be
here during the day for some
thing as informal as lunch with
fellow students and extracurric
ular activities,” he says.
— Patricia Dempsey
Prospectives
school students from a wide
variety of ethnic, racial, and
economic backgrounds have a
chance to hear about St. John’s.
Watkins majored in English
and African-American studies
at the University of Virginia,
where she earned a Bachelor
of Arts. She became
interested in issues of
access to higher education
and began volunteering
in the undergraduate
admissions office and
as a peer adviser in
UVA’s Office of African
American Affairs. She
later earned a master’s
degree in Education,
Policy, and Leadership
from the University of
Maryland.
Crystal Watkins hopes to
DISPEL STEREOTYPES ABOUT
St. John’s.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
Watkins recognizes that
many things keep a student
from applying to the college,
among them, the availability of
merit and athletic scholarships
at other colleges, the small
size of St. John’s, and more
than any other factor, the
college’s academic program.
It’s hard to find students who
are right for St. John’s, and
Watkins’ work is just one
part of a highly developed
admissions strategy geared to
identifying those students.
Watkins’ role is to make sure
that unspoken fears about
“not fitting in” do not deter
prospectives. “I think it’s a
valid concern that if you visit a
college, and you don’t see many
minority students, you wonder,
‘well, why aren’t they here?’
My job is to show that although
St. John’s isn’t right for every
student, we are a welcoming
community.
�{From the Bell Towers}
5
Linking a College with a Community
Jim Oslerholt Leads Development Efforts in Santa Fe
James W. Osterholt heard his calling
in 1971, when he was attending Union
Theological Seminary in New York
City on a Rockefeller Fellowship.
Although he soon decided that the
ministry wasn’t for him, Osterholt
discovered a new vocation while
working in Union’s development
office. “I decided then that I wanted a
job where I could be a part of the sub
stance of the academic environment
but also a part of the world outside
the university-to be a bridge between
the institution and the society it
serves,” he says.
In a similar way, fate played a hand
in bringing Osterholt to St. John’s
College. Santa Fe President Michael
Peters and Osterholt had a mutual
friend at Pepperdine University.
When the friend heard that Peters had
accepted the job as president and that
the vice president’s position was
open, the friend thought Osterholt
and Peters would work well together
and “played matchmaker,” explains
Osterholt. In July, Peters welcomed
Osterholt to Santa Fe as the college’s
vice president of advancement, successfully concluding a national
search for a key position on the college’s management team.
The Santa Fe campus and the college are fortunate to have
someone with Osterholt’s background and experience, says
Peters. “He will be a strong and effective partner, not only for
advancement, but also in the broader management of the campus
and the college,” he says.
Osterholt finds his new position challenging and rewarding.
In addition to directing plans for the president’s inauguration in
October, Osterholt’s priorities include planning for the college’s
upcoming capital campaign, scheduled to launch in spring aoo6.
He has begun working to strengthen relationships between the
college, the community of Santa Fe, and St. John’s alumni. He also
intends to increase the breadth and depth of the college’s friends
and supporters. How will he do it? “By working my tail off,” he
says. “But I’m fortunate to have a marvelous group of faculty,
colleagues, and staff to support these efforts.”
Osterholt is a self-described collaborator who most enjoys being
part of a successful team of professionals. His ai-year tenure at
UCLA culminated in serving as the associate vice chancellor of
development. There Osterholt planned a $i billion campaign.
Most recently Osterholt worked as vice president of external
relations at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where
he managed an array of external programs including development,
trustee relations, public information, government relations, and
marketing and communications. At the Milken Institute, he
served as vice president for development. He also was executive
Advancement is all about building
RELATIONSHIPS, SAYS JaMES OstERHOLT,
Santa Fe’s new VP.
director of development at the RAND
Corporation, and director of develop
ment and alumni affairs, director of
annual giving, and assistant director
of development at Union Theological
Seminary.
Osterholt attended Stanford University,
where he earned a bachelor’s degree in
American history in 1970. After his year
as a Rockefeller Fellow at Union, Oster
holt went on to earn a master’s degree
from Columbia University in 1974.
His greatest pleasure so far has been
learning to convey the essence of the
Program to existing and potential friends
of the college. Explaining what St. John’s
is all about gives more people the oppor
tunity to become involved in the life of
the college.
“There are a number of special attrac
tions that contribute to the quality of life
at St. John’s in Santa Fe, such as really
getting to know members of a smaller
community. It’s all about building relationships,” he says. “When
you have a real relationship, you are sincerely helping friends of
the college express something they are already interested in
accomplishing. In a way we are working on the same objective
furthering St. John’s.”
Osterholt’s wife of 30 years, Debbie, has been a part of every
institution her husband has served. She works as an executive
recruiter for development officers, but has never found her
husband a job. “She has, however, steered me away from a few,”
he says.
Throughout his many years in advancement, Osterholt has
acquired a collection of interesting anecdotes. One involved a gift
request that occurred over lunch with a prospective donor in a uni
versity dining hall. Osterholt recalls, “There had been a lot of
prior discussion about how large a request we should make. When
the conversation finally turned to the point where he was asked for
his gift, the gentleman passed out, literally. I guess he was asked
for too much.”
In fund raising, however, no gift is ever too small or insignificant,
and even the most modest gifts are appreciated. Osterholt saw this
firsthand when his daughter’s school had a financial emergency and
he was drafted to do the fund raising. “One of the smallest gifts in
that drive was a gift of $5, paid at $i per month for five months,”
he recalls. “It was from my daughter, who was in first grade.”
The Osterholts’ daughter, Katie, has since graduated from the
University of Arizona and is studying to become a paralegal.
{The College. St John’s College • Fall 2005 }
—Andra Maguran
�6
{Bell Towers}
Paradigm Shift
Initially, self-interest inspired
Erikk Geannikis (Ao6) to try to
assemble a Greek paradigm
handbook designed to “take the
heartache out of Ancient
Greek.” During his junior year,
he had planned to apply to
graduate school for study in the
classics and was advised that
completing an independent
project-such as compiling a
didactic tool for Greek-would
look good on grad school
applications.
Although he’s now more
interested in neuroscience,
Geannikis decided to
pursue the project anyway.
He recruited Andrew
Romiti and Paul Wilfordpartners in his Greek study
group and both juniors
planning to study the
classics-to help.
Working independently
in three different cities and
meeting in an Internet chat
room to compare notes and
exchange their sections,
they completed the project
over the summer and sent it
out for review by the faculty
and Dean Michael Dink.
Romiti took care of the
copying and binding at
Kinkos. By the time the fall
semester started, loo
copies of their “Greek Paradigm
Handbook: Reference Guide
and Memorization Tool” were
sold out.
Pocket-sized and spiral bound
to lie flat when opened, the little
booklets include paradigms for
nouns, adjectives, pronouns,
verbs, and participles and go for
$9.95. The three charged just
enough to cover their costs, and
may pursue finding a publisher
and marketing their project
beyond the college. But they
weren’t in it for entrepreneurial
reasons. They just love Greek,
explains Geannikis. They had all
been making quick-reference
charts they carried in spiral
bound notebooks, and these
served as the genesis of the
handbook.
Giving up a large portion
of their summer vacation to
the project wasn’t easy, says
Wilford. “But when we saw the
copies, it was all worth it.”
Dink was impressed with the
trio’s final product. “I suspect
students-and tutors-will find
it useful both for learning
paradigms and as a reference
tool. It does for Greek morphol
ogy something analogous to
what Green Lion’s The Bones
does for Euclid’s Elements^
he says.
“People told us it was some
thing that should have been
done long ago, so it’s been very
gratifying,” says Romiti.
Even though they no longer
have Greek in tutorial, the
three will use their own refer
ence guides as they pursue their
next independent project
together. Last year, they worked
on Philoctetes and the Sympo
sium, meeting every week
for most of the year.
They’re also compiling
notes and preparing an
index for the next volume
of their handbook.
If they ever make a profit
on their book, Geannikis,
Romiti, and Wilford don’t
want to make it from John
nies. They consider the
project a gift to the commu
nity-even a type of offering-to the Program, to
Greek, and to St. John’s.
—Rosemary Harty
Ancient Greek meets the
Internet: (l. to r.) Erikk
Geannikis, Andrew Romiti,
AND Paul Wilford used a
CHAT room to compile
THEIR PARADIGM HANDBOOK.
Ariel Program
Emily Meyer (SF06) pictures herself as a psychologist, helping
children with developmental disorders. Her interest in clinical
psychology stemmed from a conversation with the mother of a
classmate who works with autistic children. Thanks to her
Ariel Internship at the University of New Mexico’s Genter for
Development and Disability, Meyer has a better picture of
what it would be like to work in the field, along with practical
experience for a resume and grad school applications.
Born out of the Santa Fe Initiative-a college-funded program
to improve student services and the physical environment on
the college’s Western campus-the Ariel Internship Program
provides up to $3,600 to support a student in an internship.
In 2005, approximately 30 students applied; Meyer was one of
nine whose internships were funded. She administered tests,
assisted with research, and visited rural communities in New
Mexico, where she helped with consultations. “I got experience
in all areas that I could,” she says. “I worked with other profes
sionals in the field, including physical therapists, occupational
therapists, and speech therapists.”
The Ariel Program is similar to the Hodson Internship in
Annapolis, a program funded by money from an endowment
established with a grant from The Hodson Trust. Both programs
are coordinated through the Career Services offices on campus.
As with the Hodson program, Santa Fe students can use the
funding for income while working in an existing unpaid
internship or develop their own internships.
Her St. John’s studies prepared her well for the internship expe
rience, says Meyer. “Other interns I met were just not as flexible as
I was in the way I could learn. The people I worked with were all
surprised that I didn’t come from a psychological educational
background and that I could work at a graduate level.”
{The College- St. John's College • Fall 2005 }
— Andra Maguran
�{Bell Towers}
7
A Garden Grows in Annapolis
To anyone who has sat in the
courtyard of Mellon Hall in
years past, the small reserve of
green space must have seemed
a pleasant enough place to pass
an afternoon. A lawn, a few
magnolia trees, and concrete
benches under a spectacular
willow oak gave the courtyard
some charm. But now, thanks
to a gift from one of the col
lege’s board memhers, the
courtyard has a true formal
garden with graceful rows of
perennials and annuals, flower
ing trees, teak benches, and a
birdhath in the center of a lawn
rich, green, and thick enough
for croquet.
The courtyard wasn’t an
original part of Mellon’s
design; originally, the long
classroom wing faced an open
field. Adding an administrative
wing to the building created
the courtyard in the late 1980s.
For many years, college plan
ners have hoped to improve the
space, but other buildings and
grounds projects took priority.
The transformation began
last year when the college
received a gift from Frederika
Saxon, a memher of the college’s Board of Visitors and
Governors, to fund a formal
garden. Saxon is a builder and
developer in Baltimore, and
she has frequently shared her
expertise with the college.
Other gifts helped
the college complete
the project. Both
Ted Wolff (A74) a
landscape architect
and partner of Wolff
Clements and
Associates, and
Cathy Umphrey, a
garden designer and
wife of tutor Stuart
Umphrey, worked
on the project for
substantially
reduced professional
rates. Wolff provided
the design for the
plan, while Umphrey
worked closely with
Wolff and the
campus planning
committee to choose
the native plants
and arrange them
in beds.
Cathy Umphrey, the director
of horticulture at Historic
London Town and Gardens,
said the magnolias gave her a
starting point for planning a
garden that will be beautiful
year-round. “The magnolias
have this wonderful brown fuzz
on the underside of the leaves,
and we took that color as one to
pick up again in perennials and
deciduous trees. The crepe
myrtles in time will develop
this really pretty brown bark
structure. The flower heads of
the Annabelle hydrangea along
the back of the garden will turn
brown in the winter,” she says.
Local Annapolis firm Eden
Contracting did much of the
work last fall, returning to add
new plants in the spring.
Together with the glassenclosed Mellon Cafe, the
inviting garden offers the
Annapolis community another
pleasant refuge for reading,
discussion, or just sitting in the
sun. “It’s a beautiful natural
sanctuary, a private reflective
space that students, especially,
seem to enjoy,” says Don Jackson, director of operations.
{The College - St. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
Above: A lush
lawn, teak
BENCHES, AND A VARIETY OF
NEW TREES AND PERENNIALS HAVE
CREATED A WELCOME NEW REFUGE
IN Annapolis.
Left: Board member Freddie
Saxon’s generous gift made the
garden a reality.
Saxon visited the garden last
spring when the fall plantings
were in and the first annuals
were in bloom. “She thought it
was wonderful,” Jackson says.
In addition to three different
planting beds, new sod was
laid and an irrigation system
was installed. Tutor Nick
Maistrellis, who has been
on campus long enough to
remember when the courtyard
was part of an open field, is
pleased with the way the
garden enhances the natural
environment on campus.
“The garden looks good no
matter where you’re sitting,”
he says. “It’s another welcom
ing place on campus.”
—Rosemary Harty
�{Bell Towers}
8
News and Announcements
New Tutors_______________________
Eleven new tutorsjoined the
Santa Fefaculty:
Keri Ames received a B.A.
from the University of Chicago,
where she did her graduate work
with the Committee on Social
Thought, earning master’s and
doctoral degrees. Her disserta
tion was entitled “The Conver
gence of Homer’s Odyssey and
Joyce’s UlyssesF
Lauren Brubaker received
his B.A. from Swarthmore Col
lege, and M.A. and Ph.D.
degrees in Political Philosophy
from the Committee on Social
Thought at the University of
Chicago. His dissertation was
titled “Religious Zeal, Political
Faction, and the Corruption of
Morals: Adam Smith and the
Limits of Enlightenment.” He
has been a visiting instructor at
the University of Notre Dame
and at the Air Force Academy.
Kenneth Davis (SFGIoa)
received his B.A. in Music Edu
cation from Georgia State
University. He holds a Mas
ter of Divinity from South
western Baptist Theological
Seminary, a Master of Music
from the University of
Tennessee, and a Doctorate
of Musical Arts from the
Eastman School of Music at
the University of Rochester,
where his dissertation was
entitled “A Performance
Analysis of Mendelssohn’s
Five Psalm Cantatas.”
Jessica Jerome received her
B.A. in Anthropology from the
University of California at
Berkeley. She received her M.A.
and Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago, where her dissertation
was titled “A Politics of Health:
Medicine and Marginality in
Northeastern Brazil.” She
recently completed a research
fellowship at the Pritzker School
of Medicine.
T. Andrew Kingston
received his B.A. in English Lit
erature from Kenyon College.
He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
of Aesthetics, History of Music
from Boston University, where
the title of his dissertation was
“Rhythm in the Aesthetics of
Western Music.” He has taught
and lectured in humanities, phi
losophy of the arts, and music at
B.U. and Kenyon College.
David McDonald (SF95)
comes to St. John’s from the Los
Alamos National Laboratory,
where he was a senior techni
cian for the Influenza Sequence
Database, Theoretical Biology
and Biophysics Group.
Frederick Monsma (A82)
holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
from Boston College, where his
dissertation was titled
“Descartes and the Gods of
Piety and Science.” Before com
ing to St. John’s, Monsma
worked in computer program
ming, Web design, academic
journalism, and education.
Laurence Nee received his
B.A. in Political Science from
the University of Illinois. He
holds master’s and doctoral
degrees in politics from the
University of Dallas, and a J.D.
from Northwestern University
School of Law. His dissertation
was entitled “Lockean Rhetoric
and Toleration: Language in the
Thought of John Locke.” Previ
ously, he was on the faculty at
John Cabot University and the
American University of Rome.
Gregory Schneider joins the
college from the Gallatin
Community Clinic in Bozeman,
Mont. He received his B.A. from
the University of Dallas and his
medical degree from the
Moving In
With a light to read by and a refrigerator for goodies, sophomores
Josephine Drolet and Haley Thompson have the essentials covered for a
NEW YEAR. In Annapolis, 149 students became Johnnies; Santa Fe welcomed
Z19
One new tutorjoined the
Annapolisfaculty thisfall:
Matthew Caswell (A96)
received his Ph.D. in
Philosophy from Boston
University with a disserta
tion entitled “Kant’s
Conception of the Highest
Good.” He has been the
recipient of a Presidential
Fellowship and a Disserta
tion Fellowship at B.U.
He spent 2002-03 at
Philipps-Unitersitat in
Marburg supported by a
DAAD research grant.
Awards___________________
Michael Ehrmantraut
received his B.A. in Political
Theory and International
Relations from Michigan
State University and his
Ph.D. in Political Science
from Boston College. His
dissertation was titled,
“Heidegger’s Philosophic
Pedagogy.” He received a
Bradley Foundation post
doctoral fellowship at
Boston College, where he
was visiting scholar for a
year.
University of MissouriColumbia.
Alan Zeitlin received his
B.A. and M.A. in English from
the University of California,
Davis. He received a J.D. from
the Boalt Hall School of Law,
and an M.A. and Ph.D. in
Classics from the University of
California, Berkeley. His
dissertation was titled
“Terence’s Dark Comedy.”
He has taught at Bard College
and Emory University.
William Donahue (A67) will
serve as Director of Laborato
ries. Donahue received his Ph.D
in the History of Science, from
the University of Cambridge.
A former St. John’s tutor, he is
the publisher of Green Lion
Press. He has also worked as
supervisor for the Department
of History and Philosophy of
Science at Cambridge and as a
laboratory technician for the
National Bureau of Standards.
freshmen.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
_
The builder of Gilliam
and Spector halls on the
Annapolis campus has
been recognized with an
Excellence in Construction
award from the Washing
ton, D.C. chapter ofthe
Associated Builders and
Contractors. Bovis
Lend/Lease completed
Gilliam Hall late last sum
mer. Spector Hall, the
second new dormitory,
will open in January,
�{Letters}
Fine Memories___________________________
The article on Brother Robert brought back
some fine memories for me, and I would
hke to share an anecdote to show how
Brother Robert influenced other people in
addition to his St. John’s students.
A year and a half ago, I had occasion to
have dinner with the poet Robert Hass,
when he came to give a lecture at our
school in Monterey, California. His wife
told us that she worked at St. Mary’s in
Moraga, California, and that gave me occa
sion to mention Brother Robert. It turned
out that Hass had Brother Robert as a
teacher and had always considered him one
of the most influential people in his life.
He also felt that he had betrayed Brother
Robert when he was a student, because it
was a time when St. Mary’s was deciding
whether to remain true to the eternal ideals
or to become more contemporary and polit
ical. Hass sided with the contemporary,
while Brother Robert decided to leave
St. Mary’s and come to St. John’s. Hass told
me that he had always wanted to get back in
touch with Brother Robert, but he was
reluctant. I urged him to do so. I hope that
he has.
Gerry Kapolka, A74
Piercing Festival
9
City. Yet, at journey’s end, they found that
one of them used more gas. The only dif
ference was that one of the twins went by
way of St. Louis, the other by way of Miami
Beach. Voila-the Gasoline Paradox!
Wigner’s point was that many things are
path-dependent. The only weirdness is that
time happens to be one of those things.
It is a loss, I believe, that the Program
excludes textbooks. Some of the great
books were textbooks (the Summa for
example). The Program has wonderful
benefits. It excludes rote learning, which
many an inferior text promotes. And yet,
when Johnnies face the original literature
without pedagogical support, something
else is at risk, and that something is the
substance,
James H. Cooke
BROTHER ROBERT, IN HIS St. MaRy’s DAYS.
Welcoming Women
This was the inspiration for a career in
psychology which has been most satisfying.
I think Stuart would be proud to know he
has been instrumental in creating another
generation of therapy helping families,
marriages, children, and above all, teen
agers.
Thanks Stuart, you were right. I was
myself, and I did just fine.
Joe Tooley, SF69
The College featured articles on Johnnies’
experiences abroad. John Hartnett (SF83)
A Clear Account
wrote a piece about the piercing festival he
I’m sure many Johnnies could respond to
witnessed near Kumarakom, Kerala, India.
Mr. Newell’s comments on “Weird Sci
He tried to find out the origin of this pierc
ence” (Letters, Spring 2005), but as a for
ing festival during the rest of his trip in
mer tutor (Santa Fe, 1999-2001), please
India, but to no avail. My husband, Stephen
allow me. Neither the “Electrodynamics...”
Joseph, is from that area of Kerala, and
nor the Minkowski readings state or resolve
when I asked him about the festival, he told
the twin “paradox.” A clear account is
me that it was a Shiite Muslim festival cele
given in Spacetime Physics, by John A.
brating Muharram, the first month of the
Wheeler and Edwin F. Taylor, particularly
Islamic calendar. Shiites also mark the mar
in Ex. 49 in the first edition. Briefly, the
tyrdom of H az rat Imam Hussain, the grand
rocketing twin does not remain in an iner
son of the Prophet Muhammad, during this
tial frame, while the earthbound twin does,
time. The observances can range from
at least approximately, because the surface
wearing black to the more unusual practice
of the earth is almost free of acceleration.
of self-injury witnessed by Mr. Hartnett.
The rocketing twin must decelerate and
Laura O’Keefe, SFga
then accelerate back. The situation is not at
all symmetrical, and both the earthling and
Remembering Mr. Boyd
the rocketeer agree that the earthling’s
Stuart Boyd changed my life. As a young,
world line is nearly straight, while the
confused student at St. John’s, I went to
rocketeer’s world line is bent.
Stuart for counseling and guidance. After a
Eugene Wigner made it a practice to
few meetings he asked me to help him lead
present “The Gasoline Paradox” to each
a therapy group of students. I was a little
class he taught on relativity: Two identical
taken aback and said I wouldn’t know what
twins drove two identical Volkswagens
to do. Stuart said, “Don’t worry, just be
(with consecutive serial numbers from
yourself. You will do fine.”
Wolfsburg!) from Los Angeles to New York
{The College. St, John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
A small comment on “Coeds Invade St.
John’s.” At the time, the 1950-51 academic
year, I managed the labs, taught a sopho
more lab section, edited the Collegian and
served as president of the Student Polity.
When the subject was broached, Dick
pVeigle, president] asked me to convene a
meeting of the Polity to assess the student
body’s reaction to the notion of co-educa
tion. The college’s financial problems were
well known. We met in McDowell. Members
of the Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washing
ton press were welcome, but as observers
only. When the meeting was adjourned, I
would answer any questions they might
have. All but one [reporter] understood
this. He was ignored.
There were a few loonies in the group, it
was after all, St. John’s. A couple of Roman
Catholics objected to the presence of
women on traditional grounds. Most of the
concerns expressed were practical. The
sense of the meeting was that co-ed dorms
would be impractical, but women would
be welcome.
Stuart Washburn, Class of 1951
The College welcomes letters on issues of
interest to readers. Letters maybe edited
for clarity and/or length. Those under
500 words have a better chance of being
printed in their entirety.
Please address letters to: The College
magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800,
Annapolis, MD 21404, or by e-mail to
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu.
�IO
{On Augustine}
AUGUSTINE
Seeing Our Lives in the Confessions
BY Kim Paffenroth, A88
his fall marks the 20-year
anniversary of my first having
read Augustine’s Confessions.
Ironically, the huge role it
would play in my professional
life was not apparent on that
first reading. Although the
Confessions are central to the
sophomore seminar readings
that would lead me in the direction of studying
Christianity in graduate school, I was much more
moved hy some of the other readings that year: the
Bible, Dante, Luther, and Shakespeare. Like many
other first-time readers, my initial reaction to
Augustine was mostly negative: he was, by turns, too
gloomy and pessimistic, and then too triumphalistic, judgmental, and arrogant. I don’t think I ever
could have gone all the way down the interpretive
roads that I have since found out are so popular in
the academic study of Augustine-“Augustine as
neurotic” and “Augustine as miner of Western
civilization’’-but I did not immediately connect
with his life and ideas. But I also did not completely
forget or ignore Augustine and his idiosyncracies,
mostly because he had one quality that most other
theologians lack: he had a story, full of fascinating
characters, compelling conflicts, and messy emo
tions. The often overwrought and melodramatic
quality of his story is exactly what puts off many
readers, but it is also what makes him undeniably
memorable. Such a preference for narration, rather
than exposition, is what would lead me to go on to
study the Bible, a book almost entirely composed of
stories, whose theology usually has to be inferred
and is not necessarily completely consistent. It
would also lead me not to reread that other giant of
sophomore seminar, Aquinas, for whom theology
seems to be a series of problems to be solved, not a
collection of problematic stories to be lived and told
and retold.
But appreciating Augustine for his narrative
power and his greater sense of ambiguity and drama
puts him at a distinct disadvantage in the long run,
for it puts him in competition with authors of much
greater artistry and beauty. In short, compared to
Aquinas, Augustine may sound like a Shakespeare,
but compared to Shakespeare, on aesthetic grounds,
Augustine is a complete dud, a theologian who rather
{The College. St. John’s College Fall 2005 }
�{On Augustine}
Painting
of St.
Augustin by Simon Marmion
{The College- St. John’s College - Fall 2005 }
n
�Ta,
{On Augustine}
“ . .Our sinfulness is
almost alwayspathetic
and meager and childish,
just like Augustine s. ”
heavy-handedly uses some episodes
from his own life to make his
theological points. This is one
case, however, where the dialogue
begun in seminar decades ago has continued most fruit
fully for me, because over the years 1 have found many dia
logue partners for Augustine in the books 1 have read.
Although many of those partners-Dante, Pascal, Goethe,
Dostoevsky, Melville, Flannery O’Connor-are much
more talented artists than Augustine, they engage him in
an ongoing dialogue that is enriching to our understand
ing both of Augustine and of their works. They all draw on
Augustine, especially his Confessions, as a source, a
source that helps illuminate their work, even as they elab
orate and complicate Augustine’s ideas. And, of course,
the ultimate goal of such a dialogue is not just to put
Augustine in conversation with other “Augustinian”
texts, but to put all of them in conversation with the intel
lectual and spiritual problems and questions of living
human beings in the present. 1 have had the pleasure of
participating in such conversations first as a student at
St. John’s, and now continuing as a student and teacher in
many classrooms in the years since. In a different, more
sustained but more static form, it is also the kind of
conversation 1 try to create and encourage in the books I
write on Augustine and others.
Scholarly work on Augustine strives obsessively to place
him in his time period, to understand all the religious,
historical, social, political, philosophical, and literary
influences of the late Roman Empire, and fit Augustine
into them. When this is done, we will presumably “under
stand” him, the way we would understand some fossil by
knowing its geological strata and the other dead objects
that surround it. Earlier scholarship tended to put a judg
mental tone on this process, usually leading up to some
statement that maybe crudely given as, “Poor Augustine
(or Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed), he was smart, but he
was just a man of his times! He thought the sun went
around the earth, he thought women were inferior to
men, and he thought slavery was okay. Aren’t we lucky
we’re not like that?”
Postmodern thought may be
thanked for being less arrogant (at
least on this one point) and
acknowledging that we are equally
as determined and limited as the
poor, benighted people of the past, but the effect on study
and an ongoing conversation is just as chilling: the
ancient text and person are still utterly irrelevant,
because each and every person lives isolated in his or her
historical context, a cubby-hole whose walls are transpar
ent to the enlightened historian, but which are never
permeable to anyone. What I propose here instead is a
very naive, but constructive, objectivity: of course Augus
tine and we have our different historical contexts, but I
regard them not so much as prisons, but as the unique
baggage each of us carries, and 1 assume that baggage is
being carried by women and men who are essentially very
similar, people who can even discuss and analyze either
their baggage or their fundamental human similarity, and
who can therefore learn from one another.
I offer here three of the striking scenes from the
Confessions, three vignettes which, it must be confessed,
form the basis of almost all my work on Augustine. I hope
this does not only show the narrowness of my own intel
lect, but the power of Augustine to make his story ours,
and to compel us to see our lives in his.
Sin
Confessions, Book Two
Augustine begins his Confessions famously with a
scandalous analysis of sin. Having alienated many readers
by asserting-not proving, I think, but asserting-that all
babies are just bad (Book One), he goes on to analyze a
youthful, though not infant, sin of his own (Book Two).
Augustine tells us how when he was i6, he and some other
naughty boys stole pears from a neighbor’s tree. What
focuses Augustine’s attention on this incident is that the
boys did not need or even want the pears: “I stole that of
which I had plenty, even of much better quality” (Conf
a.4.9, my translation, as are all subsequent); they do not
even eat them, but throw them away. Augustine, try as he
might, cannot come up with a reason for this sin, and this
{The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
�{On Augustine}
is what bothers him, and what he thinks should bother us.
Plato-who, according to Augustine, is correct on many,
perhaps even most, theological points {Conf. 7.9.13-15)had taught that sin was always a mistake, an incorrect
assessment of the situation, and could never be a deliber
ate, knowing choice of something evil. But that is exactly
what Augustine thinks was going on with the pear tree:
“It was foul, but I loved it. I loved to perish; I loved my
own ruin, not that for which I ruined myself, but rather I
loved my very ruin itself’(Co/^ 2.4.9). Augustine claims
here that doing something for no reason does not defuse
or diminish the wickedness of that act, but instead
increases it beyond all previous estimations and beyond
any previous ethicist’s ability to explain or cure it. Even
that exemplar of senseless cruelty, Catiline, was suppos
edly analyzable under the assumption that sin is the
13
In Augustine’s thought, sinfulness is linked to the “fragile,
UNPREDICTABLE STATE IN WHICH WE ULTIMATELY LIVE,” WRITES
Kim Paffenroth.
pursuit of a mistaken good {Conf. 2.5.ii), while Augustine
claims that at the other extreme of human behavior-not
in the outrageous, powerful violence of an emperor, but
in the paltry prank of a teenager-there lies an unexplain
able mystery of self-destructive evil. Augustine goes on to
suppose that this self-destructive urge comes from pride,
from the desire to be God, rather than to love and serve
God, “a dismal imitation of omnipotence” {Conf. 2.6.14).
I think the profundity and longevity of Augustine’s
story lie in our ability to tease out its implications
and bring it around full circle, as it were. Starting with
what is a pretty laughable scene, one can delve into the
theological profundities behind it, but then see once
{The College. St. John's College ■ Fall 2005 }
�14
{On Augustine}
'Augustine bequeathed
to Christianity a
much stronger divine
grace than others
had imagined...
more both the humor and profun
dity in it, when one tries to put one
self in the story. Perhaps more than
other episodes in the Confessions^
this is easy to do, for the scene of
teenage idiocy is surely universal: I
and another dissipated youth ignit
ed about a half-gallon of gasoline in a dumpster when we
were i6, and could offer no better explanation than
boredom and laziness, the sense of “ennui” and the need
for “diversion” that Pascal would seize on so powerfully
in his analysis.
In exactly the same way, I remember a student in my
first semester teaching at Villanova University also agree
ing to the plausibility of Augustine’s story, admitting in
seminar that he and some friends had stolen watermelons
from a store and then gleefully but painfully gorged
themselves to the point of physical illness. When another
student asked when they had done this, expecting an
answer that it had happened in fifth or sixth grade, the
first student replied, “The beginning of August.” The
whole class laughed, quite appropriately. Laughing at
ourselves has an important educational value here, I
think: it is not that we are discounting our sins, but that
our sinfulness is almost always pathetic and meager and
childish, just like Augustine’s. If honest with ourselves,
we would realize that we don’t have it in us to be a Milton
ian Satan, or a Hitler or a Khan: about the most any of us
could pull off would be to become a petty thief, liar, or
lecher, with little to show for our misdeeds, except the
pain we cause others, and the complete buffoons we make
of ourselves.
And what of Augustine’s assertion of the universality of
such pathetic sinfulness? Perhaps my student and I and a
few other immature rakes can identify with Augustine,
but is it good or accurate for everyone do so? I will only
relate another anecdote that suggests that admitting sin,
dwelling on it seriously as well as laughing at it, is anoth
er important and useful lesson that Augustine has taught
us in this story. Also at Villanova, I remember one student
who didn’t say much in class, often seemed bothered if I
said something irreverent about the Bible, and always
wore a cross necklace. She literally came undone in the
first class on Confessions, however,
berating Augustine for hating
babies and me for defending him.
At first I appreciated her vigor and
umbrage, and did not see the harm
in someone believing in the innate
goodness of babies, or of people in
general, even if I didn’t share her estimation. Then I
caught her flagrantly plagiarizing later in the semester.
She didn’t seem the least bit apologetic or remorseful,
only angry at me for catching her, and a little angry at her
self for not being more adept at cheating. While this is no
proof that optimism and hypocrisy go hand-in-hand, it at
least suggests that introspection, analysis, and admission
of guilt may play some role in moral formation and
improvement.
As I said above, however, most of us aren’t that sinful, if
“sin” means really bad things that we do to hurt other
people. Most of us will probably outgrow high school
pranks and college cheating, and settle down to a middle
age of mediocre virtue, rather than move on to bigger
and worse sins. But there is another aspect of sin in
Augustine’s Confessions, to which we now turn.
Life and Death in Sinfulness
Books Four and Nine
In Confessions Book Four, Augustine gives one of the
most beautiful descriptions of the joys and rewards of real
friendship:
There were other things done with them that
captivated my mind more: talking together and
laughing together, and happily taking turns at giving
in to each others’ wishes; reading well-phrased books
together, joking together, and showing each other
respect; disagreeing sometimes, but without anger,
as a person disagrees with him-or herself, the
infrequency of our disagreements making our many
agreements all the more enjoyable; teaching and
learning from one another, sadly longing for those who
were absent, and joyfully welcoming those who joined
us. Such signs, coming from hearts that loved and
were loved in return, were shown in our faces, voices,
eyes, and a thousand pleasant gestures, and were like
{The College. St. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
�{OnAugustine}
kindling to inflame our minds and make the many of
us into one. [Conf. 4.8.13)
But the conflict and drama of Book Four stem from the
fact that one of these friends has died, leaving Augustine
devastated and in despair. In Book Nine, Augustine gives
an equally beautiful, if rather more succinct, description
of his love for his mother, “A single life had been made out
of hers and mine” (Conf. 9.12.30), and then she too dies,
leaving him with another conflict over his painful emo
tions. These two stories together form a profound work
ing through of the implications of sin: not a dissection of
the actual act of sinning, as in Book Two, but a long look
at the facts and limitations of human life lived in a
sinful world.
In these two episodes, Augustine shows vividly the
main and unavoidable symptom of original sinfulness:
not that we inevitably sin, but that we inevitably die. And
dealing with others’ deaths is even more difficult for us
than our own mortality, for the sadness in which we live
after they’re gone can last indefinitely. This past year has
brought this unavoidable and uncomfortable truth home
to me more than in previous years, and with Augustine’s
help it has become both more meaningful and (a little)
less terrifying. In the months leading up to and then fol
lowing my 20-year high school reunion, I was constantly
reminded of Greg, a friend who died right after high
school. Never mind the sins that I and others commit
every day: I can think of no clearer proof that the world is
“fallen,” “broken,” or just plain “wrong,” than to
observe that in it a person of such obvious virtue as Greg
would die a slow, lingering death from cancer, at such a
young age, leaving no progeny, while a lazy, impatient,
short-tempered, sinful person like me gets the chance to
raise kids, surely with much less success than Greg
would have enjoyed. And shortly after the reunion, my
father died, after 24 years in which he never successfully
mourned or got past the death of my mother: his
loneliness and bitterness festered that whole time, till the
only emotions he could feel were hate and rage. Again,
one needn’t judge him an awful sinner to think that what
he did was “bad”-for it contributed to his misery, not
diminished it. In both these cases, as in the mysteriously
15
painful deaths that Augustine recounts, the world’s
sinfulness is shown most clearly not in the sinful things
we do, but in the faulty, sickened, fragile, unpredictable
state in which we inevitably live.
Augustine offers us not just a diagnosis of the diseases
of sin and death, however, but also the hope of a treat
ment. Though Book Two and the gravity of sin are the
most memorable parts of Augustine’s Confessions, they
are not the final word-just as hideous punishments are
the most memorable parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but
not his ultimate point. Augustine bequeathed to Chris
tianity the idea of a much stronger divine grace than oth
ers had imagined, stronger precisely because only it could
cure the horribly enlarged idea of sin that Augustine had
developed. And one of the simplest and most frequent
graces that Augustine saw in the world was the blessed
ness that comes from loving, human relationships:
“Blessed is the one who loves you [God], and his friend in
you, and his enemy for your sake” (Conf 4.9.14). The very
relationships that cause us pain, because the people we
love must inevitably suffer and die, can bring us joy when
God is a part of the relationship, for we acknowledge that
every moment spent with the beloved person is a gracious
gift of God, a gift meant to lead us back to the giver.
As in Plato, but with a far greater appreciation for how
difficult the ascent is, Augustine believes this urge to love
our creator is built into us from the very beginning: “You
have made us for yourself, and our heart is troubled, until
it rests in you” (Conf, i.i.i). Frequently titled a “Doctor of
the Church,” Augustine-like Socrates, who also claimed
to offer therapy for wayward souls-would probably prefer
the image of nurse or midwife for himself, for according
to him, only God can ultimately heal human hearts that
are broken by sin and mortality, but which still retain the
unique imprint of their creator and their only physician
(Conf. 10.3.3-4).
Kim Paffenroth (A88) is associateprofessor ofReligious Studies
and chairperson ofthe Religious Studies Department at
Iona College in New York.
{The College. St John’s College • Fall 2005 }
�{Alumni Voices}
A JOHNNIE WAY OF LIFE
The ExaminedLife Guides a New Journey
BY Brother Ezra Sullivan, O.P. (A04)
Shortly after he graduated from St. John’s in 2004, Randall
Sullivan entered a formation program of the Order ofPreachers,
also known as the Dominicans. He moved to Cincinnati to live at
the order’s friary, bringing to his small and austere cell few
personal belongings beyond his favorite Program books (Plato,
Aristotle, Dante). He traded hisjeans and t-shirtsfor a white robe
and a black cloak. He took the vows ofpoverty, chastity, and obe
dience, and a new name, choosing Ezra because Scripture por
trays Ezra, a priest and scribe, as a man who saw study as a
means to holiness. Several months into his new life, Brother Ezra
noticed the similarities between a Johnnie’s life ofthe mind and the
spiritual and intellectual life ofhisfriary.
nyone can tell what a college thinks of
itself hy looking at the glossy promo
tional pamphlets they use to recruit stu
dents. In one photograph, foothall play
ers and cheerleaders are prominent; in
another, students and professors in lah
coats. In the promotional material
St. John’s College sent me, one image is
predominant: hooks. Stacks of hooks,
students reading books, tutors and students discussing books.
Books and conversation capture the essence of the college.
In a similar way, if you were to leaf through a book of Catholic
saints, you would find that they are often pictured with a symbol
representing their characteristic quality. St. Peter is shown with
keys, reflecting his spiritual power over heaven and hell;
St. Augustine is shown with a pen in hand because he wrote exten
sively. There is one saint that many people do not know about,
perhaps because his symbol is so ordinary. It is St. Dominic, and
his symbol is a book.
Since August of 2,004, I have been a Dominican friar, a
follower of St. Dominic, and that means a book-lover. Almost 800
years ago, Dominic started the Order of Preachers, based on the
monastic Rule of St. Augustine, known to be a great reader and
writer of books. Since then, men and women have been a part of
Dominic’s Order, which was founded, like St. John’s, on the
insight that good books can do much good for the individual
and the community. The order’s mission-ropass on to others the
fruits of our contemplation-vs, strikingly similar to the college’s
goal to endow young men and women with critical thinking
skills in order to take their place as responsible citizens. The
Dominicans were founded on the insight that reading should lead
a person to contemplate, and contemplation should lead him to
share his insights. Though friars preach and Johnnies do not, they
are similar in that they read, contemplate and share insight as a
community of learners and for a community of learners, with the
goal of enriching community life and the world.
Consider first the main paragraph on the St. John’s Web site,
which describes the aims of the college: “Through sustained
engagement with the works of great thinkers and through gen
uine discussion with peers, students at St. John’s College culti
vate habits of mind that will last a lifetime: a deepened capacity
for reflective thought, an appreciation of the persisting questions
of human existence, an abiding love of serious conversation, and
a lasting love of inquiry.”
Notice its similarities with this passage Ifom the Dominican
Constitution: “[A brother’s] intellectual formation consists
principally in the development of judgment. Therefore, a critical
knowledge of sources, an understanding of principles, and an
ability to reason properly must be carefully cultivated, so that the
brothers may be fitted to study by themselves and to take part in
serious dialogue.”
I saw clear parallels between St. John’s and the Order of
Preachers during a Dominican studies class earlier this year. The
class was structured like a seminar: the novice master (in charge
of first-year Dominicans) opened class with a question about a
reading we had done the night before. Seated at a square table, we
would discuss the reading for a couple of hours. The novice
master would guide the conversation, but he certainly did not
dominate it. Everything you would expect from a good conversa
tion arose: opinions, arguments, questions, clarifications, and
the occasional dogmatic claim. These conversations, which often
cropped up again at dinner or recreation, illustrate a Dominican
saying about intellectual disputes: “Never deny, rarely affirm,
and always distinguish.”
One incident around Lent showed me that friars are like
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 200s }
�{AlumniVoices}
Johnnies in their desire to be free from the
ephemeral in order to think on things that
are more lasting. Every morning we had
newspapers in our eating area; these papers
distracted some friars, who tried to fix the
problem by throwing them away. This
caused some controversy, which the commu
nity addressed by keeping papers out of the
eating area during Lent. This is remarkably
like the controversy at St. John’s about put
ting a Washington Post\)<yti in the Annapolis
coffee shop. (The box prevailed.)
At St. John’s, the routine was very much
the same for four years: many hours spent
alone reading, writing essays, working out
proofs, or translating alone in our rooms.
Then the bells of McDowell would summon
our mandatory attendance to laboratories,
tutorials, and seminars. In the friary, I
awake at 6:15 each morning to start the day
with prayer, read until 7:30, then join the
community for common meditation in the
silence of a dark chapel. After breakfast,
there is usually a lecture or seminar discus
sion, followed by lectio divina—^xvi2i\i& study
of the Scripture in our cells. Midday prayer
and lunch are followed by an apostolate in
the afternoon; it might mean a speaking
engagement or shelving books (I was the
librarian this year). A free afternoon can
mean time for a walk in the woods or personal reading. We have
Mass and vespers at 5:15, followed by community recreation.
Dinner is sometime spent in silence (during Lent, for example);
when we can speak, theology is almost always a topic. After
dinner, it’s time for sacred study, followed by night prayer. Some
in the community go to bed afterward, but I stay up to read for a
few more hours.
Like St. John’s, such a seemingly rigid regimen actually allows
for great freedom. It’s like the freedom of writing a fugue or a
musical piece: inside those rules that give something its form,
there are infinite possibilities. At St. John’s, I could choose what
to doubt and what to accept as truth. In the friary, I can choose
what to read, I can choose who to speak with and what to speak
about-and those are the most important things. I have the free
dom to develop my own talents or hobbies, like playing the penny
whistle in our small Irish band.
At St. John’s we had Don Rags each fall and spring. At the
friary, I meet privately with my novice master once each month
and give him an account of my institutional life: my thoughts
about the readings, my performance in class, my relation to
brothers here, and what that means about my character. It is like a
self-led Don Rag. Once or twice a year I receive an analysis by the
senior friars who live with me to determine whether I should
continue being here. This June, as I stood in line with other friars
17
In service to his order. Brother Ezra, formerly Randall
Sullivan (A04), finds freedom.
for our “examinations,” I had very little anxiety. Three years of
Don Rags had prepared me for this type of evaluation.
While there are many similarities in the life I led for four years
at St. John’s and the life I have entered into now, there are of
course many fundamental differences. A friar is devoted to a life of
prayer, and our order is devoted to preaching the word of God. In
addition, a friar is permanently in a Catholic religious institution;
a Johnnie may be changed forever by his St. John’s experience,
but he will typically go on to many different endeavors in the
outside world.
Given the special place of St. John’s in American higher
education, some might bristle at their secular college being
compared to a band of medieval preachers-a perfectly reasonable
objection. It is a little like comparing the philosopher Plato with
the theologian Thomas Aquinas, men vastly separated by creed
and culture. For some, such a comparison will only produce
difficulties. For others though, for that rare breed of people
intrigued by difficult questions-what is the meaning of life?
What is truth? What is virtue?-the comparison might produce a
worthwhile conversation.
Brother Ezra Sullivan can be reached by e-mail at
rg_sullivan @hotmail. com
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 200s }
�i8
{Commencement}
PARTING WORDS
“GREATER EXPERIENCE, MEASURED PASSIONS”
Alumni Send Grads on a Magn^centJourney
The Perma-Johnnie
In this excerptfrom his commencement speech, tutor Joe
Macfarland
referenced the Gorgias as he explored the idea
ofthe ''Perma-Johnnie in one sense, the graduate who hangs
around the Annapolis campus as long aspossible; in another, more
profound sense, the individual who is never willing to abandon a
lifelong questfor a deeper understanding ofimportant ideas:
.. .In past ceremonies, when I have sat to the side of the stage, I
have wondered. .. .What could I say to persuade you to rejoice, all
at once, at your accomplishments here as well as at your departure?
At that moment, in a darker, cynical turn of thought, I imagined
that the perfect commencement speaker would be Callicles. A
strange choice, you’re thinking, given that this Platonic character
seems wicked, or at least deeply troubled, since he argues that the
rule of the stronger is by nature just. But a few sentences from his
speech will explain my thought:
For philosophy, to be sure, Socrates, is a delightful thing, if
someone engages in it in due measure at the proper age; but if
he fritters his time away in it further than is needed, it is the cor
ruption of human beings. For even if he is of an altogether good
nature and philosophizes far along in age, he must of necessity
become inexperienced in all those things that one... must have
experience of.. .It is fine to partake of philosophy to the extent
that it is for the sake of education, and it is not shameful to phi
losophize when one is a lad. But when a human being who is
already rather older still philosophizes, the thing becomes
ridiculous.. .For seeing philosophy in a young lad, I admire it,
and it seems to me fitting, and I consider this human being to be
a free man, whereas one who does not philosophize I consider
illiberal, someone who will never deem himself worthy of any
fine and noble affair. But whenever I see an older man still phi
losophizing and not released from it, this man, Socrates, surely
seems to me to need a beating. . .It falls to this man. . .never to
give voice to anything free or great or vigorous... .(Gorgias,
484c, ff.)
Callicles has a low reputation among us admirers of Socrates,
and the seniors would, I suspect, never invite him to speak;
nevertheless, I find it hard to avoid hearing at least a faint
Calliclean echo in many commencement addresses. He does not
A “PERMA-JOHNNIE,” SAYS JoE MaCFARLAND (A87), IS ONE WHO NEVER
STOPS SEEKING WISDOM.
say, after all, that you should not philosophize; he says you should
philosophize when you are young so that you may become a free
human being, well-educated, and capable of good and noble deeds.
So rather than giving you a Calliclean echo. I’ve given you the
outrageous original. I’ve even made it partly my own, because
whatever the faults of the man, there might be just enough truth in
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
continued
�{Commencement}
''What are the sources of
this excellence within us?''
Joseph Macfarland (A87)
In Santa Fe, Sarah Holmes and Christopher Horne are
PLEASED TO HAVE DIPLOMAS IN HAND.
{ TheCollege.5?. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
19
�ao
{Commencement}
Annapolis
GRADUATES ( L. TO
R.) Sandeep Das,
Janae Decker, and
Marshall Derks.
continued
this speech for me
to adapt it to my
own purposes and
to send you on your
way. I have, how
ever, two thoughts
on how to reconcile
his harsh words
with the things we
admire. . .
My first thought
is his association of
philosophy and
youth rings true to
me, not because
philosophy is child
ish, as he implies,
but because youth
seems somehow
more philosophical; there’s less of wisdom in it, and more yearning
for wisdom. Among these seniors it seems fitting to recall Alyosha
and Ivan Karamazov, ig and 33 years old, having tea and cherry pre
serves at the Metropolis, while they pursue the eternal questionsthe existence of God and the immortality of the soul-and while they
weigh the strenuous demands of justice and freedom against a faint
hope of forgiveness and love. I find the conversation intoxicating at
least in part because it is the conversation of young people: earnest,
impassioned, open-ended, revealing a hunger for rebellion that is at
odds with a simultaneous longing for solidarity. Wise and foolish in
confused ways, their words reach further than they themselves ini
tially understand because of the way in which their youth blends
naivete and audacity.
When I go to seminar I count on all these qualities being present.
In the afternoon I mull over questions distilled from what I have
learned since I was an undergraduate, but in the evening I wait
patiently until you no longer feel obliged to discuss my question,
when it is safe to shift the conversation to your own, a question
arising from your own convictions and doubts; it is often a question
I didn’t think of, yet still a question for me, and thus a question I did
n’t recognize as my own. Thus, I believe that philosophy is rightly
associated with youth, but I’ll draw a somewhat different conclusion
from this: however much our adult life is occupied with seemingly
more serious and urgent pursuits, we must not feel compelled at all
times to act our age; we must not be ashamed, in the company of a
good friend and prompted by a good book, to recover the intoxicat
ing audacity and naivete of youth, so that we do not fail to reopen
the eternal questions now and again, in the light, we may even hope,
of greater experience and more measured passions.
The second point I want to touch on is Callicles’ emphatic
elevation of an active public life over a private life of conversation
and inquiry. It is this emphatic assertion that makes his words seem
so fitting to commencement as well as so jarring to us. Recoiling
from the shock of
the assertion, I am
made aware of a
tension between
the openness of
our spirit of
inquiry and the
customs that bind
us together in it.
Prompted by the
various opinions of
our authors, we
wonder how to
weigh the active life against the theoretical. We wonder: does
human excellence take multiples forms, or one above aU? What are
the sources of this excellence within us? If the virtues are disparate,
how are we to weave them together into a single life? For years we
have come together on Monday and Thursday evenings to pursue
these and related questions; everything else in our schedule has
been organized around this fact. The force of this immutable custom
tacitly implies a specific answer to such questions, the answer that
lured us here in the first place. After you have crossed the stage, and
said your good-byes, when your Monday and Thursday evenings are
uncannily free even well into autumn, when you are free from the
customs that bound us in practice to a certain kind of a theoretical
life, those questions may seem more open-ended to you than they
ever did before, and what you then do in your freedom will consti
tute much more of an answer to such questions than anything you
have said here.
In the Land
of the
Phaiacians____________________________________________
After earning an engineering degreefrom Princeton University,
water rights attorney John Draper studied consumer law in Swe
den, then earned a law degreefrom the University ofNew Mexico.
He completed the college's Graduate Instituteprogram and earned
his degree in ujgr. He spoke, in this excerpt, ofHomer:
One of the things that I have found personally rewarding over the
years has been a focus on the stories of Homer, both through the
Program here, and through weekly meetings over many years of [a]
group .. .of about six people who get together for an hour and a half
every Sunday afternoon to translate from the original Greek for
discussion by the rest of the group. Our progress might look
outrageously slow to those outside the group, like my wife, but I
think of it as being like sipping a fine wine.
{The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
�{Commencement}
For me, one who has never formally studied ancient Greek, this
weekly exercise of many years stemmed originally from a desire to
get as close as possible to the people and gods of Homer’s world.
As a result, many of the Homeric episodes have stuck with me.
For instance, I imagine you remember, from the Odyssey, how the
Phaiacians, after entertaining Odysseus on their island, listening to
his stories and showering him with gifts, brought him to a beach in a
well-protected cove on Ithaka. He didn’t at first recognize that he
was in his own home country. He wondered whether the people in
that seemingly strange land were “savage and violent, and without
justice,” and whether they were “hospitable to strangers.” Athena
arrived and showed him a cave near the beach in which to store his
gifts from the Phaiacians. Homer described the cave as having the
sea-purple weavings of the nymphs on stone looms and, strangely, as
having two entrances-one for mortals-and one for the immortals.
Homer left unexplained what he meant by an “entrance for the
immortals.”
I’m pretty sure I’ve been in that cove and in that cave. Our family
had the opportunity a few years back to sail to Ithaka. It’s in a fairly
remote part of Western Greece, far from Athens. About 300 yards
behind the beach of the cove that is so well protected, as Homer
says, that you don’t even have to anchor or pull your boat up on the
beach, is a cave. Its entrance is very narrow, so narrow that it was
difficult for us to slip through it-but then it opened up into a large
room with a high arching ceiling and with the purple weavings of
the nymphs on the walls, the work of water seeping down the cave
walls since time immemorial. And there was the entrance for the
immortals-a shaft of sunlight coming down at an angle through a
hole high in the ceiling of the cave-not a place for mortals to try
to enter!
Those treasures of Odysseus were stored for safekeeping in the
cave, while Odysseus and Athena went out and “took care of
business.” He had arrived on Ithaka after a dream voyage, and now
he had to go out and take care of some practical issues, hke ridding
his kingdom of the insolent suitors, rescuing his wife and son, and
re-establishing law and order before he could retrieve his gifts.
John Draper (SFGI97) likened commencement to leaving a
“lovely island of a campus.” Treasures await, he said.
Below, Santa Fe grads process to the Placita.
This sequence of events in the life of Odysseus may have some
similarity to the sequence of events in your lives at right now.
You, too, have been in the land of the Phaiacians, sharing stories
and lessons on this lovely island of a campus. Today, you are being
deposited on what may look like a foreign shore at first, but it, too, is
really your home. You, like Odysseus, may be wondering whether
the inhabitants of the seemingly foreign world outside this campus
are savage and violent, and without justice and whether they are
hospitable to strangers.
Like Odysseus, you will find, I think, that this new world is not so
foreign after all, that it has a place for you in which you can make a
home. While there will be battles you will need to fight, just as there
were for Odysseus, you are likely to be successful because you are
well-equipped from the lessons you have learned here and, like
Odysseus, you will have Athena at your right hand whenever it is
necessary for you to fight against savagery and injustice.”
The complete commencement addresses are available on the
St. John ’j Web site: www.stjohnscollege. edu
{The Colleges?. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
�{Commencement}
aa
A LONG TIME COMING
Graduates Savor Completion after Many Years Away
BY Rosemary Harty
Santa Fe: Peggy O’Shea
In high school, everything came easily to Peggy O’Shea (SF87)*.
So it was with shock that she quickly felt overwhelmed after
joining the freshman class of St. John’s College in 1983. “Bottom
line, I really wasn’t prepared for the kind of personal challenge I
found at the college,” she says.
O’Shea grew up in Wilbraham, Mass. She chose St. John’s
because she was eager for an education that didn’t involve
memorizing and repeating back answers. But when she arrived at
the college, she found it hard to shift to what her fellow Johnnies
seemed to be doing so easily.
“I think what I had the most trouble with was that I didn’t know
how to read the material analytically and ask the right questions,”
she says. “I was still reading the material to spit it back. I didn’t
have the skills to challenge the books. When I would go to class,
it was very difficult to participate in the discussions. I was
intimidated in class, and everyone else seemed to be doing so
much better.”
After three semesters, O’Shea left the college and took a job in
health insurance. She began as a claims processor, but her super
visors noted her ability to pick up new things and promoted her
frequently. “Even though I was only at
St. John’s for three semesters, it made a
huge difference in my analytical skills and
reasoning-I think freshman math helped
a lot with that,” she says. “I found myself
in the information systems department,
even though I didn’t have a computer or a
degree. I could look at the software, figure
out where the logic was breaking down,
and give evaluations to the programmers
on how to fix it.”
O’Shea prospered in the field for 12,
years. “Then managed care came along
and took the fun out of everything,” she
says. She moved into sales, where she also
did well, particularly in a favorite job: sell
ing BMWs in the Baltimore area. She was
making a nice income, she was having fun,
and fife was good-until February 16, aoot.
“I was driving home from work and was
hit head-on in an intersection a mile from
my house,” O’Shea recalls. Her car was totaled and she suffered a
serious neck injury. Taking customers for test drives seemed less
appealing, and after she was rear-ended in 2002 and the lingering
injuries from the accident worsened, O’Shea knew it was time for
a change. She began job hunting. “For the first time in my life, I
found they weren’t even interviewing me because I didn’t have a
degree,” she says.
O’Shea had attended college part time, off and on, and consid
ered applying her credits to a program in which she could earn a
degree after about a year of full-time study. One program she
looked into would grant credit for her work experience. Good
grades would probably come more easily than at St. John’s.
It was tempting. But instead, O’Shea sat down and filled out an
application for readmission to St. John’s. “I really wanted that
accomplishment of challenging myself,” she explains. “I chose
St. John’s because to me, it’s more about who I’m going to be
as a person.”
Returning to the college in Santa Fe would allow her to make a
fresh start. With Buddy, her chocolate Labrador in tow, O’Shea
drove west and settled into an apartment. Being about 20 years
older than most of her classmates made her feel a little self-con
scious, especially when a bookstore clerk tried to give her a tutor’s
discount. Overall, O’Shea felt warmly
welcomed by the campus community.
Through the Career Services offices,
she learned of an internship in the Gover
nor’s Office, applied, and got it. Since it
was unpaid, she held down a second job,
working on a FedEx loading dock from
5 a.m. to 8 a.m. each morning. “It was
really hard getting up for work after
seminar nights,” she says.
Through her internship O’Shea discov
ered a passion for public service. In Gov.
Bill Richardson’s Constituent Services
office, she was doing interesting work
that she felt was important. At the end of
her junior year, she was hired as a
contract employee.
{The College -Si. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
Celebration: Peggy O’Shea’s parents,
Patrick and Mary Ann O’Shea, were on
HAND FOR COMMENCEMENT IN SaNTA Fe.
�{Commencement}
In the classroom, the Program was just
as difficult as O’Shea remembered it, and
there were times during junior and senior
years when the workload became oppres
sive. After struggling with her sopho
more essay she took advantage of writing
assistance and improved her papers. Her
tutors were encouraging.
“I worked as hard as I possibly could
and just stuck it out,” says O’Shea.
“There was no way after so many years
away and giving up so much to go back
that I would drop out.”
“When Peggy O’Shea joined my sopho
more seminar, after ao years away from
SJC, I wondered if this quiet woman
would be able to hold her own among her
far younger classmates,” says Santa Fe
tutor Patricia Greer. “ Well, not only did
she hold her own, she shone! With
tremendous determination and dedica
tion, Ms. O’Shea found her voice at the table and her stance on the
books. She struggled to remember how to write a seminar paperand then began to produce fine work! During the two and a half
years she was with us in Santa Fe, she became such a solid and
important member of our community.”
On May 21, O’Shea’s parents, brother, and great-nephew; her
girlfriend, Susan; and Susan’s parents were all in the audience
when she received her diploma. “It was a great celebration,” she
says. Within weeks, she had packed up again, this time starting a
new phase of her life as a student in the LB J School of Public Affairs
at the University of Texas in Austin. She will take the LSAT this
fall, and if accepted into the program, hopes to shift to a four-year
joint degree program in which she would earn a J.D. and a Master
of Public Affairs. Ultimately she’d like to work as a policy adviser at
the federal level.
O’Shea can’t help but wonder how her life might have been dif
ferent if fate hadn’t set her on a course back to St. John’s. Some
times she misses that thrill of closing the deal. But the same skills
she used to put customers in a slick new 3 Series will come in handy
when she’s ready for Washington. “In politics, you have to sell your
ideas,” she says. “I really think I’ll be good at that.”
Annapolis: Nick Golten
For many years, Nick Colten (A97) was a baker. Day after day, he’d
rise in the dark for his 4 a.m. shift at a neighborhood cafe in
St. Paul, Minn., his hometown. Bundled up against the icy winters,
he’d walk to work and spend the day baking bread, rolls, muffins,
and cakes. Most of the time, he hated it-but he was stuck in a hold
ing pattern after leaving St. John’s in the spring of 1994.
“I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do next,” Colten says.
Several things had prompted him to drop out. Perhaps he wasn’t
quite ready for the full scope of the Program. He loved to read, and
he thought St. John’s was the place for him. “Academically, I did all
23
Nick Colten joined
clues and made
CONNECTIONS WITH OTHER JoHNNIES WHEN
HE RETURNED TO CAMPUS.
right,” Colten recalls. “And I liked the
give-and-take of discussions.” Yet he
didn’t feel connected to the community,
so after his freshman year, he went home.
Colten first found a restaurant job as a
line cook, and that led to baking. Baking
may seem a pleasant way to earn a living,
Colten says, but he found it hard, tedious
work. “For one thing, I was chronically
sleep-deprived. And managing so many
different tasks at the same time-that’s
the difficult part. Mix up the dough,
knead the bread, get that batch in the
oven, start a second batch, check on the
bread in the oven.”
After work, he’d take a nap, later
heading out to the Oak Street Cinema,
an art house where he volunteered in exchange for free admission.
He loved Buster Keaton and Francois Truffaut films. Citizen Kane
and Casablanca. His other intellectual refuge was the Minneapo
lis-St. Paul chapter of the St. John’s Alumni Association.
“The chapter seminars sustained me for a long time and ulti
mately got me interested in going back to school,” says Colten.
Friends and family nagged him. Eva Brann, whom he had visited
often while she was dean and he was a freshman, encouraged him.
After about eight years with his arms elbow-deep in bread dough,
Colten was ready to come back. He started in the fall of 2002.
“I was nervous about the Greek-I had my old manual and
tried to prepare,” he recalls. After a seminar on Genesis went
“especially well,” Colten found himself excited about his studies in
a way he hadn’t experienced the first time around.
“I also felt a great desire to be connected to the community,” he
says. “I joined the fencing club, study groups, EnergeiaC He
joined the waltz committee and learned to dance. He became a reg
ular contributor to the Gadfly, where he found an outlet for his
passion for politics and public affairs.
Colten worked on campus, in the mailroom and at other jobs he
could pick up. Supporting himself and keeping up with the Pro
gram was exhausting, but it was all so much better the second time
around. “I didn’t want junior year to end,” Colten says. Every year,
for his birthday, he’d bake a big birthday cake and leave it in the
Coffee Shop for others to eat.
On May 15,12 years after first coming to Annapolis, he graduat
ed. His plan is to attend law school and eventually work in public
interest law. “Holding public office-I don’t think that would be
good. But helping to get the right people elected, get the right
things done, that’s something I’m interested in,” he says.
*College tradition assigns alumni status based on the originalyear
ofmatriculation, for graduates and nongraduates alike.
{The College - St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
�{Homecoming}
24
-- ........
JOHNNIES
JOURNEY HOME
By Libby Vega (SF06)
anta Fe Homecoming 2005 welcomed seven nnderHomecoming seminars. “I cherish the seminar,” noted Khin
graduate reunion class years back to campus July i
BLhin Guyot Brock (SF88), and many agreed. Elaine Pinkerton
Goleman (SFGI88) made time for homecoming “for the chance
to 3, and also brought together more than 20
to really converse about great literature, and the mental
Graduate Institute alumni to commemorate the
loth anniversary of the Eastern Classics program.
challenges.” Reunions this year included class years 1970, ’75,
The Eastern Classics
’80, ’85, ’90, ’95, and 2000.
Seminar topics ranged from
graduates celebrated a decade of
inquiry into the foundational texts
Nietzsche to Chekhov to Joyce.
of India, China, and Japan with a
Alumni this year were also treated
special reunion at the Hunt House
to Shakespeare Reader’s Theater, a
on Friday, hosted by President
seminar and minimalist theater
Michael Peters, enjoying his first
performance in which there are no
homecoming. The EC party was
full sets or costumes. The script is
followed by a lecture and concert
used openly, as the emphasis is on
by renowned sitar player Allyn
the text itself. Both Reader’s Theater
Miner, a senior lecturer in the
performances, of The Tempest and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, were
Department of South Asia Studies
at the University of Pennsylvania,
student-led under the direction of
where she is a teacher and scholar
Marnelli Hamilton (SF05), assistant
of Sanskrit, Hindi, and Urdu
director of alumni and parent
music. Drawing on her extensive
activities.
musical and historical knowledge.
“When I first learned how Reader’s
•r.u- Annval Homm-omim;
Miner spoke on the cultural
Theater works, I thought it would be
background and compositional
a unique and original way to examine
structure of sitar music, demon
texts many of us have read but few of
strating on the instrument.
us have performed,” Hamilton said.
“In classical Indian music,”
Later in the afternoon attendees
she explained, “a rag or raga is
were treated to a “Speaking Volumes”
the melody, whereas a ras or rasa
lecture entitled “Euclid Made Me
is the emotion of a rag.”
What I Am Today,” by William
«
fc»»>
.
After the concert, the music
Kowalski (SF94), author of the novels
played on with a rock ‘n’ roll party X
Eddie Bastard and The Guardian.
in the coffee shop. Many alumni
In his talk, Kowalski discussed why
said the spark of memory was
his lifelong ambition to be a writer led
ignited the minute they caught a
him away from creative writing pro
glimpse of old friends. “I came to
grams and toward St. John’s College:
reconnect with my classmates, most of whom I hadn’t seen for 10
a desire to study more than just the craft of writing, and to
years,” said Ben Friedman (SF95).
become a more well-rounded and interesting person.
On Saturday morning, alumni gathered for what might be con
continued onpg. 26
sidered the most familiar and popular offering of the weekend;
{The College - John’s College Fall zoos 1
�{Homecoming}
Homecoming in July in Santa Fe
FEATURED MANY HAPPY ENCOUNTERS:
(clockwise from top: Sharing
Homecoming yfith a future
Johnnie; Danilo Marrone (SF90)
catches up with a classmate;
Elaine Pinkerton Coleman
(SFGI88, left) and Dianne Cowan
(SFgzjpERFORM A Shakespeare
play; Santa Fe tutor Robert
Sacks (A54) engages an alumna in
conversation.
{The College. John's College ■ Fall 2005 }
35
�a6
{Homecoming}
ALEXIS Brown (SFoo,
EC03) RAISES HER GLASS
IN CELERRATION.
continued
Continuing the celebration of authors and artists, the doors
swung open to the All-Alumni Art Show immediately after the
lecture. The show featured works in an array of media, including
painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, jewelry, video,
textile, and glasswork.
With children ushered to special games and a pizza party,
alumni took part in a Homecoming banquet on the Placita. Each
class offered its own group toast, and toasts were made for new
honorary alumni Bonn Duncan and Elliot Skinner.
Elliot Skinner joined the Santa Fe campus a year after its
founding, having studied the classics and philosophy at
Princeton University and the University of Colorado. Alumni
Association President Glenda Eoyang remembered Skinner as
an outstanding tutor and a “gentle spirit” from her student days
in Santa Fe.
“We know that then, as now, each tutor and each student
engaged with others to make discoveries about themselves and
each other, the part and the whole, knowledge and opinion,”
Eoyang said. “Mr. Skinner was a master at such engagement.
One alumnus, a particularly snotty one, reports that in sopho
more language Mr. Skinner taught him to see that he was a snot
and how not to be one-a good lesson that we could all teach and
learn more often!”
Skinner, she noted, had a talent for drawing out reticent
students in seminar. “Though there are many examples of his
generosity and insight, one that distinguishes him in this com
munity is the support he has given to help quiet students find
their voices in seminar,” she said.
Duncan, Eoyang said, has been a true friend to the collegeone of the many people in the Santa Fe community who donate
their time and talents to support the college. As chair of the
Philos Society,
Duncan leads an
organization of
Santa Fe residents
who support the col
lege and its program
of study through
fundraising and
other activities.
Duncan earned his
bachelor’s degree
from the University
of Kansas and his
medical degree from
the University of
Missouri School of
Medicine. He completed his residency at the Johns Hopkins
Hospital and specialized in head and neck surgery. After a visual
injury ended his surgery career, he became the chairman of
Health Systems International, a computer company which he
brought from Yale University to the private sector.
“Not only is Dr. Duncan, himself, a friend of the college, but
as the chair of the Philos Society, he is also a leader of friends
and a friend of leaders,” Eoyang said. “Those ofyou who are my
vintage may be surprised that the college has committed and
active friends in the Santa Fe community-they were a rare breed
in my day. Because of Dr. Duncan and his friends, there is a
different story to tell today. Under his stewardship, the Philos
Society has demonstrated friendship to the college in
many different ways, including initiating the ‘Inviting
Conversations’ program and hosting events such as
Summer Classics and wine tastings.”
With hunger then abated and the night sky
resplendent, the Midsummer Ball commenced with a
swing band.
As the weekend drew to a close, the final event was a
Sunday brunch at Hunt House, home to President
Peters, and his wife, Eleanor. Always well-attended,
this year’s brunch gave many alumni their first
opportunity to meet President Peters and the new
vice president for advancement, Jim Osterhoft, and his
wife, Debbie.
Glenda eoyang welcomes Elliot Skinner to the ranks
OF ALUMNI.
{The College -St. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
�{Homecoming}
a?
Artwork Unites Johnnies over the Years
t is said that art
transcends the hounds
of time, and so does the
fellowship that unites
St. John’s College
alumni. The college’s
annual All-Alumni Art Show
has always been a stimulating
venue for alumni of all ages
and backgrounds to celebrate
the spirit of art and creativity
that the Program inspires, but
it is not often that the artist
and patron are separated by
more than 6o years of age,
especially when the purchaser
is only 21. At the 2005 alumni
art show, one piece of artwork
stood out for Mia Posner,
(SF07). It was a small wooden
sculpture entitled Flash
Dancer, created by Billy Lieb (A45).
Despite the fact that Ms. Posner is an
undergraduate student on a tight budget,
she knew she had to have it. What com
pelled her was not only the charm of the
piece, but also the fact that it is the craft
work of an alumnus so much her senior.
“It’s so important for Johnnies to
support each other, even if we’re separated
by generations. There is no formal art
The annual Alumni Art
Show continues to be a
FAVORITE PART OF
Homecoming WEEKEND in
Santa Fe. Above, Santa Fe
SENIOR Mia Posner with
Flash-Dancer, by Billy
Lieb (A45). Below,
I
GALLERY VISITORS ARE
TAKEN WITH THE ARRAY OF
ARTWORK ON DISPLAY.
program here, so I appreciate Johnnies
who can explore their artistic side as well
as the academics,” she says. She wanted to
buy the piece before the art show even
opened. The sculpture had caught her eye
one afternoon while she helped Maggie
Magalnick, the gallery curator, set up the
exhibit.
The artist attended St. John’s College in
Annapolis for two years during and just
after World War IL He
then went on to get his
degree in film from
UCLA in 1952. He spent
25 years working in film
before retiring to become
a peace activist and
attend art school. Since
then, he has studied with
Jill Geigerich, Laddie Dill, Georg Herms,
and Betty and Allison Saar, and shown his
work at the University of California,
Riverside.
The sculpture is also significant to
Ms. Posner because she, too, is very inter
ested in film and art. She sees the piece as
inspiration. “It serves to remind me that
St. John’s alumni are a community. We may
be separated by years and miles, but
nonetheless, we are a family.”
—Andra Maguran
{The College -St. John's College ■ Fall 2005 }
�a8
{Student Voices}
“I AM A DISTANT SON
99
Annapolis Senior Joins Youth in a Questfor the Self
BY Donald Stone (Ao6)
“The whole ofthis doctrine leads as to a conclusion, which is ofgreat importance in the
present affair, viz. that all the nice and subtle questions concerningpersonal identity
can neverpossibly be decided, and [because ofthis, they] are to be regarded rather as
grammatical than asphilosophical difficulties. David Hume.
‘Tam a distant son, a man, a convict and a cousin. lam charitable, smart, strong and
talented. lam happiest when I’m on the good side ofpeople and they think lam a good
person. ’’-Will P., 17.
" ill wrote these
simple, poetic
words while par
ticipating in
Insights: Identity
Project, a Vision
Workshops program. Will’s words seem
to echo Hume’s conclusion that one’s
personal identity is not so simple as to
be articulated. According to Hume it is
possible for Will to be a convict and
everything else he lists. However, it is
not possible for one to ozt^be a convict,
for Hume would say that is our imagina
tion creating simplicity in a perception
of a person’s identity for the sake of
articulation.
In Treatise ofHuman Nature, Hume
explains that we are inclined to ascribe
identity to objects because of our
incapacity to always appreciate the great
variety of parts that compose these
objects. For instance, because of our
imagination “a ship ofwhich a consider
able part has been changed by frequent
reparations, is still considered the
Justin E., a self-portrait.
same” and “an oak that grows from the
small plant to a large tree, is still [consid
ered] the same oak,” although in each case
them. More specifically, participants in the
not even one part of the whole may be
program learn to use the tools of a photothe same.
journalist-writing and photography-to
As a photography instructor for Vision
explore and express aspects of their
Workshops, I am introduced to students
identities.
who have grown and experienced frequent
Based in Annapolis, the nonprofit
reparations. It is my job and my pleasure to
organization Vision Workshops partners
learn from the participants what else there is with the Juvenile Drug Court of Anne
besides “juvenile delinquency” in their iden Arundel County and National Geographic to
tities, and then I assist them in identifying
cultivate alternative means of expression in
parts of their lives, environments, and per
underserved youth. With the guidance of
sonalities that are particularly important to
writing and photography instructors and
W
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
dedicated volunteers, students are given the
opportunity to learn collaboratively with
their peers, gaining new perspective on
their self-image and controlling which parts
are shared with the world. On the first day of
the program, held at Maryland Hall, a cul
tural center not far from campus, each stu
dent is put in charge of a camera. Over the
next month, he or she will be responsible for
its safety and will use it to complete
home assignments. Some have never
used a camera before; others are sur
prised to be entrusted with it. In the
first two hours of the workshop they
shoot their first roll of self-portraits,
and later print their own photographsalways a highlight of their experience.
By the end of the program each stu
dent creates and polishes a short poem
or essay and a self-portrait photograph.
A great strength of the program is the
gratification the students feel in having
success in learning a unique skill, and
the pride associated with sharing the
final product they create. An effort is
made to have the students’ work widely
displayed in exhibits at the District
Courthouse on Church Circle and at the
Chaney Gallery in Maryland Hall.
I became involved with Vision Work
shops at the end of my sophomore year,
when photographer Kirsten Elstner, the
director of the program, accepted my
request to volunteer in the fall of 2004.
The exceptional group of people I
worked with, coupled with the capabil
ity of exploring my interests in photog
raphy and in working with teenagers, made
my time volunteering a lot of fun and helped
balance out all the time I spend with the
“old dead guys’ on the reading list.
Along with the support of volunteers.
Vision Workshops succeeds through the
energy and direction of Kirsten Elstner and
freelance writer Cindy Edwards, and with
the support of the Anne Arundel County
Juvenile Drug Court, Maryland Hall,
National Geographic, Nikon, and the Target
Corporation.
�{Student Voices}
Donald Stone (Ao6) volunteered last
year with Visions Workshops, helping
youth who have heen involved with
the court system to express their
feelings in words and images. He
also drew Chester Martin (Ao6) and
Freya Thompson (A07) into the
program as volunteers. “I’ve heen
grateful for its influence in informing
my post-St. John’s thoughts and
aspirations,” Stone says of the pro
gram, to which he returned for anoth
er year this fall.
Self-portraits by (clockwise, top right)
Raymond H., Henry M., and Paula T.
{The College.Si. John’s College . Fall 2005 }
29
�30
{Bibliofile}
World Federalism: Idealism Meets the Cold War
The Politics of World Federa
tion: Vol. i: United Nations, U.N.
Reform, Atomic Control. Vol. 2:
From World Federalism to Global
Governance.______________________
by Joseph Preston Baratta
(Praeger, 2004)
By Rosemary Harty
n his thorough two-volume history
of world federalism, Joseph Baratta
(A69) shows that the political
climate of the 20th century could
have heen vastly different, if after
World War II the idealists and
intellectuals had heen effective in drafting
a world constitution to unite governments
across the globe, if national leaders had
seen the necessity of founding a much
stronger United Nations to keep the peace,
and if millions of people had been prepared
to follow wiser leadership. The Politics of
World governments must seek newways to
World Federation is a comprehensive
UNITE FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL HUMANITY, SAYS
history of a movement supported by a wide
Joseph Baratta.
range of people of differing backgrounds
and political ideologies. Instead of world
federal government, Baratta shows, the
on to establish a new program at
world got the Cold War-complete with the
SUNY, Old Westbury, inspired in part by
Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
St. John’s.
decades of arms production that consumed
Baratta, who teaches history and
resources that could have been directed to
international relations at Worcester State
more beneficial uses.
College, labored for 25 years on the
The world federalist movement included
project. His interest was first piqued by
atomic scientists, such as Albert Einstein
encountering the “Preliminary Draft of a
and J. Robert Oppenheimer; intellectuals,
World Constitution” of 1948, republished
including Robert Hutchins and E.B.
by Robert Hutchins in 1965. Baratta
White; lawyers once connected to U.S.
admired the ideals of the movement for
government, such as Grenville Clark;
many reasons, first, after serving in the
energetic and passionate young students,
Marine Corps during the Vietnam War,
such as Harris Wofford; and seasoned
and second, studying works such as the
politicians, like Brooks Hays and Henry
Federalist Papers and Plato’s Republic at
Wallace. World federalists were men
St. John’s. “In the Marine Corps, we were
and women who reacted to the use of the
told that the purpose of a battle is to reach
atomic bomb with horror and with the
a decision,” said Baratta. “I wondered if
deep conviction that nations must join
there were not a more rational way to reach
together or face an inevitable third
a decision. At St. John’s I saw that the
world war.
reason why wars continue is that the world
The movement also attracted the
has no working rule of law.”
attention of Stringfellow Barr and Scott
Baratta began reading volumes of Com
Buchanan, founders of the New Program at mon Cause, the journal of The Committee
St. John’s, and many others intimately
to Frame a World Constitution, written by
involved with the college, including Mark
Hutchins, G.A. Borgese, and Adler.
Van Doren, Mortimer Adler, and Wofford,
“These people explored the anarchy of the
a close friend of Buchanan, who would go
national state system in the spirit of the
I
{The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
conversation of the great books,” Baratta
says. He combed through thousands of
documents and conducted dozens of inter
views. He wrote his doctoral thesis at
Boston University on world federalism and
continued his research for what would
become The Politics of World Federation.
“I discovered a movement that hadn’t
made it into the history books,” he says.
His final product is not only an outstand
ing scholarly achievement, but also a
personal testament for his own strong
views that today’s governments must seek
out new ways to bring the world together
for the benefit of humanity.
Baratta concentrates on the period after
the failure of the League of Nations. In
1939, a journalist named Clarence Streit,
alarmed by Hitler and the portents of
another world war, published a book called
Union Now, which proposed a federal
union of democracies against the Axis
powers. “If ever a book made a movement.
Union Now was such a book,” writes
Baratta. Publication of the book led to
organizations including Federal Union in
the U.S. and Great Britain and World
Federalists in the U.S. The most active
years for the movement were those
immediately following the bombing of
Hiroshima. Internal dissent, a lack of
adequate funding, and McCarthyism
weakened the movement, and by 1954,
Baratta writes, it was largely defunct.
A pivotal issue in the failure of the move
ment was the rejection of the Baruch Plan
for the international control of atomic
energy, presented to the United Nations
Atomic Energy Commission, June 14,
1946. The plan proposed the creation of an
International Atomic Development
Authority that would manage “control or
ownership of all atomic-energy activities
potentially dangerous to world security,”
ultimately placing America’s nuclear
weapons in the hands of an international
body, which would have had many
attributes of a world government.
If the world federalists had the power
and numbers to back the Baruch plan, the
story might have been different, but “they
didn’t unite themselves until 1947,” says
Baratta. “Then President Truman
announced the Truman Doctrine, which
inaugurated the Cold War. Federalists got
organized too late.”
�{Bibliofile}
In his second volume, Baratta devotes a
chapter to another pivotal time: the events
surrounding the Pocono Conference of
T948, when Stringfellow Barr was most
actively involved in world federalism. Barr
and Buchanan had left St. John’s in 1946,
following a successful but bitter fight
against a Naval Academy takeover of the
campus. They attempted to start a new
college in western Massachusetts, but
could not attract adequate funding for their
vision. Barr took a year off, Baratta writes,
but he quickly became very involved in the
most revolutionary wing of the world
federalist movement. While others worked
gradually by U.N. reform, Barr and others
felt that the atomic bomb required
recourse to a “people’s convention
a grassroots approach to working outside
of national governments by selecting
international delegates who would draft a
world constitution. McCormick reaper
heiress Anita McCormick Blaine gave
$T million to the cause. Barr became chair
man of a planning committee, aiming at
election of 143 American delegates to a
constitutional convention in Geneva in
1950. Britain had a similar movement, led
by MP Henry Usborne, to elect 2,8 popular
representatives to the convention.
Scott Buchanan, who later worked with
Barr, opposed the people’s convention.
He believed the place to start was with the
U.N. and with national governments:
“World government is a revolutionary
idea. It would touch every last item of our
political life. Most people who believe in it
do not realize this. They also don’t realize
Michelangelo’s Mountain:
The Quest for Perfection in the
Marble Quarries of Carrara
by Eric Scigliano (SF75)
Free Press, 2005
Eric Scigliano has roots in Carrara, a village
in the Apuan Alps in northwestern Italy,
that run as deep as the veins of prized
marble that have been quarried there for
more than 2,000 years. Scigliano’s
great-grandfather and his relatives were
quarrymen and stone carvers in the
quarries of Carrara, the same quarries that
Michelangelo frequented to select the finest
marble for his sculptures. In Michaelangelo’sMountain, Scigliano offers a historical
perspective on Carrara and its famous
how much opposition there will be to it.
For this reason the PC horrifies me.”
Barr, however, continued the approach.
The money was used to establish the
Foundation for World Government, but it
all came to naught in all the difficulties of
the time for forming a more perfect union
''Contrary to so many
ofmy experiences in
life, I continue to have
faith in human reason.
Worldfederation
offers apositive vision
ofpeace.
Joseph Preston Baratta
with adherents of the Communist party.
Mrs. Blaine wanted Henry Wallace, the
Progressive party candidate for president,
to be a board member. Leaders among the
United World Federalists feared the Com
munist strains of Wallace’s challenge to
Truman in 1948 and would not take any
money. Barr, writes Baratta, “found
himself in possession of a million dollar
foundation for world government, whose
support the American movement would
not accept, at a moment when money was
marble-pietra viva, “living stone”-as
evoked in the gospels, Plotinus, Michelan
gelo, and folktales. Scigliano unearths
surprising Carrara connections, such as
how Dante’s wanderings in the marble
country influenced The Divine Comedy.
Long interested in the Italian Renais
sance, Scigliano wrote his sophomore essay
on Giovanni Bellini’s painting, St. Francis in
Ecstasy and Boticelli’s St. Augustine, and
drew insight and inspiration from a
preceptorial on Michelangelo. “I’m sure I
would have gone to Italy anyway, but this
preceptorial sharpened my eye and laid the
groundwork for this project,” says Scigliano.
In recent years, he has made several trips to
Italy, where he reconnected with his rela
tives who still work in the marble business.
{The College • St. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
31
never more urgently needed to build up a
popular movement for an East-West settle
ment and permanent peace through world
government! ”
Nevertheless, the world federalist
movement had major achievements.
It brought about resolutions favoring
U.S. participation in a world government
in aa state legislatures, and some 16 bills
were introduced in Congress. Hearings
were held on the topic in the House in 1948
and ’49 and in the Senate in 1950. Senators
Hubert Humphrey, Wayne Morse, Claude
Pepper, and J. William Fulbright
supported these bills. A large literature
from over 70 nations on fundamental U.N.
reform has been produced, including the
Chicago draft constitution and Grenville
Clark and Louis B. Sohn’s World Peace
through World Law. Even Barr and
Buchanan’s foundation pioneered new
international fields like functional eco
nomic and social cooperation, Gandhian
nonviolence, and individual educational
field work anticipatory of the future Peace
Corps. Most federalists, like international
ists, have today mended their differences
in favor of universal membership, repre
sentation of democracies, maximal powers
affecting both peace and justice, and U.N.
reform for the transition.
“I’m an idealist,” Baratta says. “Con
trary to so many of my experiences in life,
I continue to have faith in human reason.
World federation offers a positive vision of
peace. Its history exhibits a new kind of
world political wisdom.”
The narrative traces Michelangelo’s
passion for his art and his grueling journeys
into the mountains of Carrara to find mar
ble that had never before been extracted.
He weaves Michelangelo’s life story with
the story of Carrara itself-a region of
intrigue and rivalries, including Medici
conspiracies to overturn the Carrarese
marble monopoly. It was also a region of
conflicts, such as those that took place
between Roman legions and Liguri tribes,
Napoleonic and Austrian invaders, and in
modern times. Fascists and resistance
fighters. Scigliano also considers Michelan
gelo’s legacy in today’s international
sculpture community,
—Patricia Dempsey
�{AlumniProfile}
3^
Peter Fairbanks, A73, Values the Authentic
BY Patricia Dempsey
t the Montgomery Gallery
in San Francisco, founding
director Peter Maynard
Fairbanks (A73) cuts a tall
figure, wearing his trade
mark bowtie and sipping
tea from a china cup as he confers with
clients at a round, inlaid igaB Saarinen
table. Trained at Sotheby’s, London, as an
art connoisseur, appraiser, and auction
eer, Fairbanks is also an art dealer and a
consultant appraiser to Antiques Road
show, the popular PBS series now in its
ninth season. Fairbanks’s work requires
expertise developed over 30 years in the
art world: the ability to distinguish the
authentic from the false.
One afternoon, Fairbanks received a
call from a man who had just purchased on
eBay two watercolors allegedly by Picasso
and Miro; the caller wanted to know if the
works were genuine and asked for an esti
mate of their value. “I told him, T can’t
tell you anything from a phone conversa
tion; I need to see them,’ ” says Fairbanks.
“He brought the two paintings to me and
besides it being immediately apparent to
me that they were fakes, I also recognized
the hand of the forger. After 3a years in
the auction and art business. I’ve learned
to distinguish the authentic from the
false-both with objects and the people I
meet.”
Fairbanks glides easily between describ
ing the billion-dollar fine arts fairs at
which he exhibits in London, New York,
Paris, and Maastricht, the Netherlands, to
nature. I enjoy the physicality of handling
his stint as an instructor at the Hurricane
objects, the discovery, the research, the
Island Outward Bound School in Maine. He
authentication. I needed to see the front
often draws upon his roots as a pragmatic,
and back of a painting, see what stretchers
flinty New Englander for the perseverance
and canvas it’s on, not just look at photo
to succeed in the art world. He combines
graphs or slides and learn from footnotes.”
his flair for business, nurtured during boy
Fairbanks’s desire to examine all aspects
hood summers when he “farmed” no lob
of a subject drew him to St. John’s. Fair
ster pots off the Massachusetts coast, with
banks came to St. John’s in his aos, having
his love of art. Growing up in Gambridge,
first attended Bard College for a year,
Fairbanks developed a deep appreciation
followed by three years of conscientious
for fine art, especially from his mother,
objector’s alternative service during the
who studied art history in the graduate
Vietnam War. “Given my way of learning,
program at Harvard’s Fogg Museum. “I
thought I would be a professor as well, but I the structure at St. John’s suited me-the
regular regime of small classes, daily read
found that academia was too dry for my
A
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 200s }
Is IT REAL, OR A VERY EXPENSIVE FRAUD?
Peter Fairbanks knows the difference.
ings, dialogues, and theorems on the black
board, and most difficult for me, the fixing
of one’s thoughts in the written word. It
was a terrific education. It’s impossible to
compare St. John’s to any other higher
education institution-there is no place like
it. It’s like being in a monastery for four
years, where the students are speaking
their own language, so deeply immersed in
the ‘life of the mind.’ ”
There’s a connection, Fairbanks says, to
the type of careful analysis done in the
�{Alumni Profile}
Program and the work he does today, “I
think it was at St. John’s that I learned the
process of how to examine, and that has
been invaluable throughout my life, both
personally and professionally,” says
Fairbanks. “At St. John’s I learned to
question accepted postulates.”
After graduating from St. John’s,
Fairbanks took on a yearlong executive
program at Sotheby’s, London. The course
was directed by the late Derek Shrub.
“His approach to the history of art and
antiques was as unique as the education at
St. John’s,” Fairbanks says. “I was trained
to identify the style, date, nationality, and
perhaps author of an object with the idea
being that every object is a part of its
culture, a part of the spirit of that time.
I was expected to examine a leg of a chair, a
part of a candlestick, passage of a painting
and determine: Is it Southern German,
Eastern French Baroque, or Northern
Italian Baroque? While wildly annoying at
the time, this approach allowed me to look
at that Miro watercolor dated 194a and the
Picasso dated 1934 and determine they were
both most likely executed in the 1960s.”
Following his training at Sotheby’s, Fair
banks worked in the auction business for
15 years as an appraiser, executive adminis
trator, and auctioneer in New York, London,
and San Francisco. He went to San
Francisco to “grow” the then-small regional
Butterfield Auctioneers, making it the
1949
third-largest auction house in the United
States. By 1984, Fairbanks was “consumed”
by administrative tasks. “I realized my work
was far from the fine art objects that origi
nally inspired me to enter this profession.
So I founded the Montgomery Gallery with
two former employees.”
Even when he delivers the news that a
Picasso purchased on eBay is a forgery,
Fairbanks wants people to understand how
he arrives at that conclusion. He wants
them to be at ease with art. “A large part of
this profession,” he says, “is educating your
clients about the art they are attracted to,
assisting them in understanding that their
own-often unexplored-visual vocabulary is
valid. I try to help them feel comfortable
and show them they already have taste. But
many feel a tremendous imbalance between
the knowledge I have and their lack of it.”
Through his work for the past decade as
an appraiser for Antiques Roadshow,
Fairbanks has helped make knowledge of
fine art accessible to the wider public. “I
never thought of myself as a good student,
yet at St. John’s the great books were
accessible to me. It’s the same in the art
world-knowledge is accessible to every
one,” says Fairbanks. "Antiques Roadshow
has helped to demystify the world of fine
art. It has also been a lot of fun.’
1950
The Rev. Fredemck P. Davis
John R. Garland is continuing
writes: “Let me report to the
alumni of the early to middle
years of the ‘new’ program that
Rachel (Hinman) Hovde, widow
of Chris (class of 1945), died at
91 years on May i, 3005. Long
time organist and choir director
at St. Anne’s Church, she
became a clergy wife when Chris
took orders in Chicago.”
in an informal seminar group
started years ago by Tom
Williams (class of 1951). “After
55 years I’ve finally learned how
to finish reading before the
discussion,” he writes.
33
Good News, Bad News
Fans of the popular PBS series
Antiques Roadshow tune in to see
some guests discovering a valuable
find among their attic treasures, oth
ers learning that their item is nothing
but yard-sale fodder. In a February
2004 episode, appraiser Peter Fairbanks-who has been with the show
since its debut-had good news for a
California man who brought in a por
trait of his ancestor. Commodore
Thomas Tingey, painted in the early
19th century by John Trumbull.
Along with a framed copy of Tingey’s
commission (signed by President
John Adams) and his uniform, the
portrait represented “a great collec
tion of American history.” History,
swell-but the cash value? Fairbanks
estimated the well-preserved and dis
tinctive portrait as worth $30,000 to
$30,000. Too bad the painting wasn’t
in its original frame though, Fair
banks noted; that might have brought
the value as high as $50,000. 4"
attend Homecoming for my 50th
reunion, hut I felt poorly and soon
was told I had to undergo open
heart surgery on October 38.1 am
only just now really pretty much
back in living trim. I am writing
this to assure those of my class
mates I missed seeing this 50th
Homecoming that I hope to see
them at the next 50th.”
1964
1954
Richard B. Carter hated to
miss Homecoming last year in
Annapolis; “I fully expected to
William C. Triplett, II, and
Eleanor Noon Triplett are
pleased to announce the birth of
their first grandchild, Evelyn
Berwanger Triplett, born July 3.
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
1967
Ginger Kenney (Gay Singer)
writes with professional and
family news: “Along with Sasaki
Associates’ principals Daniel
Kenney and Ricardo Dumont, I
have completed a book on
campus design for the
ACE/Praeger Series on higher
education. Written for institu
tions leaders and the planners
and designers who work for
them. Mission and Place:
Strengthening Learning and
Community through Campus
Design shows how institutions
can leverage one of the most
�{AlumniNotes}
34
powerful resources they have for
overcoming today’s challenges:
the campus and its environs,
providing a foundation for
making decisions about the
physical campus that are
grounded in the institutional
mission. Mission and Place is
available from Greenwood
Publishing Group (www.greenwood.com) andAmazon.com.
In other news, my son Adam,
23, graduated last year from
Brown University and is now
working in software develop
ment for Microsoft in Seattle.
My daughter Margot, 18, has just
started her freshman year at the
University of San Francisco and
is planning to major in Spanish
and Latin American studies.
Alas, neither one of them a
Johnnie, but both happy in their
choices, which is, after all, what
counts. Now empty-nesters, Dan
and I are hoping to travel a little
more in our ‘spare’ time. Can
you tell we’ll be heading west
from time to time?
I am now working in strategic
academic planning and in edito
rial consulting, as I progress
toward a certificate in financial
planning. I’ve also been active in
the Boston chapter for a number
of years. The chapter welcomes
visitors to the Boston area to join
in its activities.”
1969
Beth A. Kupe (SF) writes, “I’ve
moved to Longmont, Colo.,
about 12 miles from Boulder and
40 miles from Denver. I love it
here-there is so much commu
nity spirit! I’m just a day’s drive
north from Santa Fe, and I wel
come visitors: 3800 Pike Road
#30-203, Longmont, CO 80503,
303-682-0169, bethkuper@
yahoo.com.”
1970
Jeffrey D. Friedman (A)
writes: “We are up to eight kids
and eight grandchildren. I am
now using the analytical and
listening skills from St. John’s in
Talmud study, teaching, and life
coaching. Anyone in Israel,
e-mail, or call and come visit!
Friedyo7@netvisi0n.net.il.”
1972
David Carey (A) is a philosophy
professor at Whitman College
in Walla Walla, Washington,
“tackling Plato, Aristotle,
Augustine, and Aquinas
annually. Thanks to SJC for the
wonderful preparation.”
1973
Jeff Angus (SF) has publishing
news: “In what seems a relatively
trivial note, my newest book
came out at the beginning of
baseball season. Management by
Baseball: A Pocket Reader
(Occam & Dihigo, $12.95) is a
management how-to book
predicated on the Truth that
almost everything you need to
know about management you
can learn from baseball. Using
lessons and stories from the
national pastime, it presents
practical tools to teach managers
and aspiring managers how to be
more effective at the work in any
kind of organization. A bit like a
Stephen Covey book, but less
Mormon. Anaximander,
Heraclitus and Lucretius
(still The One), are all small but
essential ingredients in the mix.
The book can be purchased
through independent book
New Beginnings
NDREW PiETRUS and ZoE Beatty (both A91) have
three news items: Sofia was born April 23; she
joins Marcel, a, and Matthias, 4. Zoe finishes OB
residency in Jnly and enters private practice back
in Raleigh (they planned to move in July from
Pennsylvania). Andy wraps up four years of being
a stay-at-home dad and will return to teaching middle-school
students at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Raleigh.
sellers or directly online from
the Management by Baseball
Web site: http://cmdr-scott.
blogspot.com
“I’m still doing management
consulting, still a contributing
editor at Info World, writing
product reviews and an occa
sional feature. I’m now writing
opinion columns for the online
version of the magazine
CIO Insight, and sabermetric
analysis for The Seattle Times.
“I’m about to become a
grandfather for the first time. My
step-daughter, Alexandra, who
lives in Paris with her French
husband, will have given birth to
a baby in July.”
Joan Heller (A) reports:
“David Humphreys (A69) and I,
for better or worse, are no longer
together, and I have reverted to
Joan Heller. Our four sons,
dialectically educated at home,
are: Justin Heller Humphreys,
20-year-old classics major at
Reed College in Portland, Ore.;
Samuel Barnes Humphreys, 17year-old aspiring ballet dancer in
NYC; Nathaniel Harding
Humphreys, 14-year-old student
of the Emerald Ozma Home
School in Ashville, N.C.; and
Nicholas Menzel Humphreys,
g-years-old with Down
syndrome, arguably our most
avid reader to date.”
{The College. St. lohn’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
1975
Four exhibitions of artwork by
Howard Meister (A) began in
August and continue through
the winter. “Stilled Lives”-lifesize digital scans of dead things
exhibited at the Contemporary
Artists Center in North Adams,
Mass., in late summer.
Other recent life-size scans of
food and eroticism were on
exhibit at the Last Minute
Gallery in Northampton, Mass.,
December 30-January 29. A
selection of Meister’s studio
“Art Furniture” from the 1980s
and 1990S will be on exhibit at
The Modernism Show at The
Armory (NYC) in November and
at Art Basel Miami in December.
Howard can be reached at
HMMeister@aol.com.
1977
Judy Kistler-Robinson (SF)
moved from Minnesota in Febru
ary and has enjoyed the long
spring in Plano, Texas. She is
working as a usability specialist,
improving voice user-interface
designs for banking, communi
cations, and other automatic
voice response systems.
Judy heard recently from
Katya Shirokow (SF76) inquir
ing about next year’s 30-year
reunion. Katya shared this news:
�{Alumni Notes}
35
Barrelhouse: Pulp, Pop, Prose
" hy must so-called
“literature” and
“pulp” always
remain at odds?
Why, asks Aaron
Pease (A98), can’t
there be a bridge between modern and clas
sic, something that will appeal to both
those who already love literature and those
who don’t know what they’re missing?
Barrelhouse is meant to be just that. A
literary journal featuring everything from
poems to short stories to essays, inter
views, and comics. Barrelhouse was created
by Pease and a few of his friends who meet
regularly to critique each other’s writing.
Pease has a day job as a proposal writer; by
night, he’s simply a writer, one with a love
for both classical literature and modern
writing.
“We toyed with the idea for a while, and
it started making sense,” Pease says. “We
thought there was a niche for this kind of
thing-something not just functional, but
site, where they receive writing submis
appealing on multiple levels. Something
sions from around the country in all differ
that looks good, has solid writing, but still
ent genres. From these, they selected a few
manages to reflect our culture without a
to put into their first print edition oiBar
jaundiced eye.”
relhouse, published late last fall. The goals
Barrelhouse was designed to appeal to
for the magazine remain fluid: for now,
both those who are already avid readers
they’re content to remain mostly Web
and those who are “interested in ideas and
based, while getting the print version out
brightly colored things.”
in the D.C. metro area.
Pease and colleagues started with a Web
W
“My son, Alexander, is now 10
years old. I am producing nature
and wildlife films for television
and still live in California. We
recently produced two films for
PBS called Kalahari: The Great
Thirstland and Kalahari: The
Flooded Desert. I’ve been
spending over 10 years traveling
frequently to Africa-mostly to
Botswana-bits that are still very
wild and very empty of people
and very, very far from the
troubled parts of that huge con
tinent.” Katya’s next project will
be in Latin America.
Asks Judy: “Any other class
mates thinking ahead to this
reunion?”
Gene Glass (A) writes: “I have
become a grandfather much
more quickly than I was pre
pared for! It’s all good, though,
as the son of my stepdaughter is
now almost five months old. I’m
looking forward to seeing friends
at our 30th reunion in 2007.”
1979
A LITERARY JOURNAL WITH AN ATTITUDE:
Aaron Pease (aSq) hopes to bring culture
TO THE MASSES.
“Putting together something like this
requires critiquing ourselves and our
choices, trying to figure out why we like
the stories we like,” he says. In selecting
material for the journal, the editors try not
to dismiss something because it falls into a
“type,” while not publishing a submission
just because it fills a “type” they haven’t
addressed. Eventually, they want to solicit
stories and essays from established
authors, take out ads in writers’ magazines
to target emerging writers, and assign their
poetry section to a full-time poet.
They’re off to a good start. The first
printed edition A Barrelhouse featured
stories from a combination of new and
recognized writers as well as an interview
with country/folk legend Emmylou Harris.
When asked how they managed to get to
talk with the legendary singer. Pease con
fessed that they had an “in”-one of their
good friends is a relative. “But,” he says,
“we’ve found that people are more willing
to talk than you might think. It’s publicity
for them, and they’re still just people.”
teacher, interpreter/translator,
and business owner in Japan;
1993-96, law school at Indiana
University in Bloomington; 1998
to present, lawyer. “Married to
Carmen, and loving it! Contact
me at leslie_westmoreland@
yahoo.com. I would love to hear
from you!”
1980
Leslie W. Westmoreland (SF)
is a deputy attorney general in
Fresno, Calif., and here’s how he
got there: 1980-82, Peace Corps
(Zaire); 1983-84, ESL teacher in
Saudi Arabia; 1985-93, ESL
—Roseanna White (A04)
1983
This fall Desiree Zamorano
(SF) will be a new member of
Occidental College’s Education
Department faculty, as well as
the director of their Community
Literacy Center.
1986
Bob Neslund (SFGI) will teach
Latin half-time the next two
years and write a history of
Shattuck-St. Mary’s School for
its 2008 sesquicentennial.
{The College. St. John ’5 College ■ Fall 2005 }
Susan Read (SFGI) writes
that she’s “still enjoying my
life in Connecticut, teaching.
�36
{AlumniProfile}
An Island Refuge
Sarah Mara, A6i, Has Deep Roots on Lone Pine Island.
ot everyone can experience
life on a tiny island in the
St. Lawrence River, suffer
the thrill of plunging into
icy water on a summer’s day,
or watch the lights of pass
ing freighters dance on the water at night.
Wanting to share some of the most vivid
memories of her childhood, Sarah Robin
son Mara (A6i) joined with her sister, artist
Nancy Rohinson Hammond, in creating
A Snug Little Island, a children’s hook that
presents the joys of life on Lone Pine Island
through the eyes of two children.
Sarah and her husband, John, spend five
months each year on Lone Pine Island, a
quarter-acre granite outcrop where they
built a cottage. Lone Pine is one of the
Thousand Islands, a group of more than
1,700 small islands in the St. Lawrence
River just east of Lake Ontario.
Farther east of Lone Pine is the slightly
bigger Long Rock Island, where Nancy
Hammond and her husband, Robert R.
Price, Jr., rent a converted skiffhouse.
In joining together on their book project,
the two sisters recaptured favorite
memories from their childhoods in the
Thousand Islands.
“I’ve been returning to the river every
summer for 65 years-missing only a fewsince I was six months old,” says Mara.
“The islands, the river, are my roots, where
family gathers. I understand the dangers:
hidden rocks in the water, navigating at
night, watching out for the looming hulls of
freighters in the total darkness. I love the
color of the blue water, how it sparkles on a
clear day when the wind is from the north.
Children who grow up here never forget it.”
After graduating from St. John’s and
marrying plastic and reconstructive
surgeon John Mara in 1972, Mara pursued
various career ventures. “You come out of
St. John’s a true liberal artist,” she said.
She worked in London at IBM, United
Kingdom, and for Eastman Kodak in
Rochester. She adored her stint as manag
ing editor of a weekly newspaper in New
York, writing the editorials and a regular
column, managing stringers, laying out the
paper, and taking the photos. When John
retired in 1992, Mara became the family
bread-winner, for several years commuting
by boat to her job as administrator of the
Antique and Classic Boat Society.
Abandoning the mainstream for a quiet
life with time for reading, organic garden
ing, and watching sunsets was a careful
choice the Maras made, one Sarah links to
her Johnnie days. “Without St. John’s in my
background, I doubt we would have had the
courage to make such a dramatic decision,
or even have known about the pleasure of
such a life.”
Along the way, the Maras built their cot
tage on Lone Pine, which Sarah’s parents
had owned, and where she and her family
camped out in tents during the summer.
On the island, self-reliance is key. “Lifting
all the time lifting! Bringing over filled
water jugs, groceries, boxes of books, and
taking away garbage. Slippery docks in the
autumn, slippery rocks after rain. No septic
system, no public sewer system.”
{The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2005 }
Sisters Nancy Hammond (r.) and
Sarah Mara (A61) brought talents and
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES TOGETHER IN A SNUG
Little Island.
Fog can trap the Maras on their island or
keep them from returning from the
mainland. They stock up on drinking water,
canned tuna, and dried fruit to sustain
them through bad weather. Once the
couple awoke to a violent storm that shook
the house. “Trees were cracking in half all
around us,” Mara recalls. “Waves slammed
against the shore. The storm cut a swath
through the islands, uprooting trees and
swamping boats. We lost electricity for
five days.”
Ultimately, the benefits far outweigh the
difficulties. “The island is a refuge,” Mara
says. “We can be boisterous, we can be
quiet. We can be idle or industrious. It’s
snug in the cottage, especially with a fire in
the woodstove when it’s cold or rainy.”
continued on pg.
�{Alumni Notes}
37
Policy. He previously served as
executive director of The Philan
thropy Roundtable. Prior to that,
O’Gara was a drug policy analyst
for the Senate Committee on the
Judiciary. Earlier in his career,
he served as a foreign policy
specialist, advising the adminis
trator of the Drug Enforcement
Administration at the
Department of Justice.
Jennifer Lee (SF) has career
news: “My family and I have
been back in the states four years
now. I am currently teaching
third- and fourth-graders at a
small progressive school where
the money is poor but the
teaching is good.”
1990
1989
Matthew Shane Heimann was born to Dave (A87) and Jeannie
Heimann on July 4, 2005. He weighed 7LBS. 14 oz and was 19 3/4"
LONG. He joins his brothers Jake, 4 z/2, and Noah, 2.
parenting, mountaineering, and
skiing. I’ve come to appreciate
the many natural attractions and
cultural events in New England.
Best to all.”
1988
James F. X. O’Gara (A) was
nominated by President George
W. Bush to be deputy director for
Supply Reduction at the Office of
National Drug Control Policy.
He currently serves as special
assistant to the Director of the
Office of National Drug Control
continued
Each October, when the days grow colder
and the river becomes dark and foreboding,
the Maras move to a home in Kingston,
Ontario. When they return to Lone Pine
each summer, they must reclaim the island
from a boisterous gaggle of geese.
Though she had never written fiction
before, Hammond’s encouragement-and
her offer to illustrate the project-were all
Mara needed to take on the project.
Summer on the St. Lawrence River was
translated into words and images, and two
children, Richard and Kate, were nudged
into life, complete with cheerful curiosity,
thin limbs, and blowing flaxen hair. In the
story, the two children are placed with their
duffle bags aboard Captain Harry’s water
taxi to be ferried over to Lone Pine Island
for a vacation visit with their aunt and
uncle.
Kilian Garvey (SF) recently
Nathaniel Herz (A) writes:
“Alexander Shulman Herz was
born on Feb. 27, 2004, and he’s
a beautiful baby! He joins
Charlotte Shulman Herz, born
on May 7, 2002-the apple of her
Daddy’s eye. Contact Nathaniel
at NH237@columbia.edu
Refactoring to Patterns, a soft
ware industry bestseller by Josh
Kerievsky (SF) is now in its
third printing and has been
translated into eight languages.
The adventures and mishaps of Richard
and Kate spring not only from memories of
Sarah and Nancy, but also from those of the
real-life Richard, Nancy’s son, now 33, who
loved the island life throughout his child
hood. (Mara named the young heroine of
her book after Richard’s wife, Kate.)
Along with illustrating the book, her
sister provided editorial advice and encour
agement, says Mara. “Nancy was my editor,
my sounding board, my critic. She insisted
on the ‘real’ thing-forcing me to dig deeper
into my memory. We exchanged memories.
I would ask her, ‘do you remember, did
Captain Harry wear a hat? What sound do
katydids make? How do waves sound hitting
the rocks?’ ”
From this partnership grew a handsome
book in which the children’s activities are
wholly familiar: learning to sleep in a tent,
operate a boat, shop for provisions, and
outrace a storm. The book captures a
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
finished his dissertation
(“Cerebral Laterality of False
Memories”) and received a Ph.D.
in cognitive neuropsychology
from the University of Toledo.
“I now do research in social
neuroscience and evolutionary
psychology at the University
of New England in Biddeford,
Maine.”
Alexandra Edelglass
Stockwell (A) writes, “Gabriel
Thomas joined our family June
9, 2005. He was born at home,
weighing ii lbs., 8 oz. Eight-yearold sister Josephine, 6-year-old
brother Christopher, and his
continued on pg. gg
timeless child’s world, an endless summer
vacation. Hammond’s bright drawings of
rock-strewn islands, herons, and barefoot
children bring the island world to life. A
longtime friend of the college, Hammond is
well known for her artwork, which for years
she sold in a shop near the campus.
Sarah Mara and Nancy Hammond return
to St. John’s in November to speak at the
the Caritas Society’s Meet the Authors pro
gram, an annual fund-raiser in Annapolis
that also features journalists Steve and
Cokie Roberts. A Snug Little Island can be
ordered from Pink Granite Press, PO Box
231, Thousand Island Park, N.Y. 136920231; or on Nancy Hammond’s Web site:
www.nancyhammondeditions.com.
—Nancy Zimmerman and Rosemary Harty
�38
{Alumni Profile}
High-Flying Ideals
Kira Zielinski, SFgs, Finds Fuljillment in the Skies
BY Erica Naone (A05)
helicopter, to Kira Zielins
ki, is “a bionic extension
of your body.” The energy
of the machine, which can
stay still in the air or make
tiny motions there, “courses through you and you have to feel
it.” Accidents happen, she says,
“when it starts flying you; when it
is a machine.”
Zielinski learned to fly helicop
ters during a seven-year stint in
the Marine Corps, which she
joined the day after graduating
from St. John’s in Santa Fe in 1995.
Now a civilian, she pilots Chopper
4 over the streets of Washington,
D.C., toting a WRC news crew
covering traffic, weather, and
breaking news.
Her passage from the academic
life at St. John’s to the technical
and physical training she received
to become a pilot makes sense in
light of what matters most to her
in the Great Conversation. A ques
tion she keeps at the forefront of
her thoughts and actions is, “What
is life?” At St. John’s, Zielinski
says, “it was a training in think
ing-in honing your being to the
maximum extent, in living
consciously and not as an animal.”
In the search for a conscious
life, Zielinski has tested herself
mind and body. She loved St. John’s for
its academic intensity, and she chose the
Marines in part for the rigorous physical
training. She has bicycled through the
Pyrenees. She has immersed herself in the
history of the Crusades, fascinated by “the
sheer corporeal nature of it all.” What
becomes clear about Zielinski after an hour
of conversation is that when she says she is
“not a cubicle girl,” she means that down
to her core. She is not satisfied with being
told the answer, with hearing about how
something works, or with anything besides
going out and trying it for herself.
It was this that led her to St. John’s in
the first place. Zielinski had always been
interested in classics. When a guidance
counselor at her Massachusetts boarding
school told her about St. John’s, she was
attracted to an educational philosophy
that required students to “read the books
themselves, to go out and chart the sun
with the Ptolemy stone, not just sit in the
classroom.”
Not A CUBICLE girl; Kira Zielinski (SF95)
ONE DAY HOPES TO FLY FOR HUMANITARIAN AID
MISSIONS ACROSS THE GLOBE.
Her decision to join the Marines
shocked some of her classmates, but
Zielinski was driven by a need to get out
from behind a desk and explore “the other
side of the Greek ideal.” The transition
was a bit of a jolt. After four years of
discussing honor and virtue in seminar,
she was handed a book on her first day in
the Marines that had definitions for both.
She respected the definitions she found
there, but the contrast in her environment
was clear.
Zielinski looks back on her time in the
military with respect and gratitude, but
she is also relieved to have returned to
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
civilian life. The only female in a squad of
13 men, Zielinski felt a pressure far differ
ent from what she had felt as the only
female lab assistant in Santa Fe. In the
military, she found herself in a situation
where “anyone with a sensitive soul was
picked on extra hard.” It was
emotionally difficult to be the
image of a Marine at all times, to
be always reserving a private
place in herself apart from her
identity as a marine.
As a marine, however, her peers
trusted her to act with a high
level of honor and integrity. She
enjoyed the respect she was able
to earn as an officer and misses
the understanding that “your
word is your honor.” Sharp
analysis of great historical battles
appealed to her, as did getting out
from behind a desk and learning
to fly.
After her discharge, and some
time off to travel, Zielinksi wound
up in Tucson, Ariz. The military
taught her how to fly, but she
lacked the flying time most
civilian employers require and
had a hard time finding a job in
aviation. “I was flipping through
the Yellow Pages, looking up ‘H’
for helicopter and making phone
calls,” she says.
Her persistence paid off. She
embarked on a series of helicopter odd
jobs, such as firefighting and flying short
sightseeing tours over the Hoover Dam
and the Grand Ganyon. Along the way,
she gained the flight hours she needed
and made connections in the aviation
community.
Earlier this year, Zielinski began
studying for a master’s degree in aviation.
Within a few years, she’d like to volunteer
for an organization like Doctors Without
Borders. As someone who has always
sought to be like Tomb Raider’s Lara Groft,
she wants to apply her technical skill, sense
of adventure, and passion for languages
and learning-always keeping in mind both
sides of the Greek Ideal.
�{AlumniNotes}
father, Rodd, and I are happy
and grateful. Our holistic medi
cine practice is growing,
although I will be at home work
ing on the domestic arts as best I
can for an undetermined (long)
time.”
bi-gay, reproductive, and other
civil rights and liberties, Nancy
will be going on the market next
year as a constitutional law
professor.
1994
1991
Akiba Covitz and Miriam
Spectre (both A) announce the
birth of their daughter, Lilah
Spectre-Covitz, born in May
2004. She joins her brother,
Abe, who turned four in May
2005. Look for us in Virginia
cars with the plates “SJC91”
and “FERRIES.”
1992
Brad Hodge (SF) was married
in November 2003. “My wife and
I are in the process of adopting a
child from Guatemala. We are
very excited! I see Luke Warren
(SF) often, since he also lives in
the D.C. area.”
1993
Nancy Marcus (A) has received
her LL.M, (second law degree)
from the LFniversity of Wisconsin
Law School and is now pursuing
her SJD (third law degree) as a
dissertator at UW. Her thesis
article, entitled “Reyond Romer
and Lawrence: The Right to
Privacy Comes out of the
Closet,” is due to be published
by the Columbia Journal of
Gender and Law in the Winter
2005/2006 issue. Aboard
member of the National Lesbian
and Gay Law Foundation and an
activist and lecturer on lesbian-
39
1996
Marybeth Guerrieri (A)
Brian and Lea Brock (Brian,
completed her master’s degree
in Transpersonal Studies at the
Institute of Transpersonal
Psychology in Palo Alto, Calif.
SF, ECoi, and Lea, A98, ECoi)
write: “We are conducting an
experiment. Can one exist in the
world with his notions of the
Good, True, and Beautiful?
We are renting a farm near
Madison, where Brian is starting
Sawhorse Recording Studio and
playing with a band called
Goodbye Kitty. Lea is training
her new horse and exploring
equestrian and Socratic summer
possibilities. The fact that she
received a teaching license
having admitted to exclusively
engaging in Socratic Seminar
with students and to never
teaching to the standards-is a
bit of evidence suggesting an
affirmative answer to the
aforementioned question.
David M. Brooks (SF) has
Hanan Mikuasz (AGI) writes of
relocated to Florida and has
successfully opened his own
private practice specializing in
adult mental health. He is
looking forward to start training
to become a psychoanalyst in the
next year.
a recent homecoming: “I took
my live-year-old son in July to see
the Pyramids and the land where
I grew up. The Pyramids haven’t
changed much, but just about
everything else did. Congestion,
people, and noise are every
where. Still, I was comforted by
the defiance of some aspects of
Egyptian culture to change and
by my son’s smiles.”
“I just wanted to share the news
of my second baby boy, Owen
Louis, born April 29, 2005,”
writes Phoebe Merrin Carter
(SF). “Brother Dylan has just
turned 4.1 am (still) the Youth
Services Manager for the Weber
County Library System in
Ogden, Utah. My husband is an
adjunct professor of history at
the university here, and we have
this great old house, 86 years
old! Greetings to everyone with
whom I have lost touch! ”
1995
1997
J. Stephen Pearson (A) recently
completed required coursework
for a Ph.D. in comparative
literature: “My main foci are
American minority literature
and the history of Christian
devotional literature,” he writes.
“For my dissertation, I plan to
explore the similarities between
minority experiences and
religious experiences.”
Cameron T. Graham (SF) is a
specialist with Army Intelligence
at the Defense Language
Institute, Monterey, Calif. While
stationed at Fort Jackson, S.C.,
earlier, he won the award for a
perfect score in the physical
program. He’s been serving with
the Army for about 15 months.
Nice to Reminisce
Jennifer Swaim (A) is pleased to
announce the receipt of her doc
toral degree in psychology. She
specializes in health psychology
and is currently a research fellow
at a private hospital in north
eastern Ohio. She would enjoy
hearing from old friends at
jcswaim@gmail.com.
ara Giles (SF95) writes: “My husband, John,
and I are enjoying Nebraska’s good life and all
it has to offer. He continues to be a biology
professor and conduct research in parasitology
at one of the colleges, while I am finishing up
a master’s degree at the university in anthropol
ogy, specifically on Mexican immigration and cultural divers
I work with numerous people with connections to St. John’s
all have wonderful things to say about SJC, so it is nice to
reminisce with them. In other news, our daughter, Sofia, turned
10 this year and won top honors at the Nebraska Summer Music
Olympics in piano, and her fourth-grade standardized testing
demonstrated that her academic and scholastic skills are at an
advanced high school level. We have a lot to be proud of in her,
but mostly that she is a wonderful person. If anyone is in
Nebraska and wants to meet at the Coffee House in Lincoln,
drop me a line atyehkatah@yahoo.com.”
M
{The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
�{Alumni Notes}
40
Heidi Jacot (A) is starting
Yale Divinity’s School’s Master
of Arts in Religion program
this fall.
1998
Alexandra D.E. Boozer (A)
married Daniel Giguere of
Windham, Maine, on September
19, 2004. She has even more
news: “Last year I received my
doctorate in clinical psychology
from George Washington
University, with a specialization
in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
We are currently living in
Holmes Beach, Fla., where I am
working toward obtaining
Florida psychology licensure. I
would love to hear from any old
friends or to link with other
students/alumni with an interest
in practicing psychology. I can
be reached by email at: alexandra
_FL@hotmail.com”
writes Brendan Bullock (A).
“Currently I’m putting work
together for my first solo show at
Santa Fe’s Price Dewey Gallery
ATHY GarcIa (SF03) was pleased to be accepted
in
November. I’ve also launched
to the Graduate School of Education and Infor
my
own Web site, which I hope
mation Sciences at UCLA. This program will,
people will visit: www.brendanat the end of two years, award her a master’s in
bullock.com. I would love to
education and full credentialing so that she will
hear from any and all by e-mail. I
be able to teach mathematics to high-schoolers
can
be contacted through my
in L.A.’s inner city. (“In the city, city of Compton.”) If
anyone
Webtosite or at brendanbullock@
is strolling through Southern California, please feel free
hotmail.com.”
contact her at PHI_PI_E@hotmail.com.
Straight Into Compton
C
her husband, Rob, are excited to
announce the arrival of their hrst
child, Evangeline Jane, on
November 16 at 5:33 a.m. “At
birth she weighed 7 pounds,
3.5 ounces, and was 19 inches
long. Her name means ‘Good
news, God is gracious,’ and
that’s exactly how we feel about
her; she is good news and God
was so gracious to give us this
precious baby. She really is the
perfect baby. She has always
slept for at least four hours
straight at night, and she hardly
ever fusses.”
Lorna Johnson (SF) has
recently started her own
business in executive IT
recruitment. She has also been
accepted as an associate director
at The Artistic Home, an equity
theater in Chicago, and as a
faculty member at the Artistic
Home’s training studio, which
teaches Meisner method acting
to professional actors. She also
recently became a member of
the Board of Directors. Her
husband, Aaron Johnson,
continues to play piano and
organ professionally.
Nathan August Scheifer (SF)
reports: “Computer engineering
degree completed in December
2004; new house closed in April
3005; my son was born on June
3, 3005; and I passed the Patent
Bar Exam on July 18, 3005.”
Justin Kray (SF) writes:
Jackie (Cavim) Travis (A) and
1999
HonorMoody (SF) writes,
“I finally graduated from library
school and am currently
cataloging 17th-, i8th- and 19thcentury culinary works at the
Schlesinger Library and looking
for an archival processing gig.”
2000
John M Hunter (AGI) and his
wife, Lisa, announce the birth of
George Brooks Hunter on March
30, 3005. Baby Brooks joins his
brother, Jeb, 18 months.
Andre Rodriguez (SFGI)
earned his law degree in May
3004. He became a licensed
attorney in Texas in November
3004. He is currently teaching
nth-grade U.S. history and
coaching soccer while working
part time as a lawyer.
Flame Schoeder (SF) and
Jeremiah Roper are intensely
proud to announce the birth of
their daughter, Sasha Ryan
Roper. She was born on May 38,
3005, at 11:59 a ™., after 58
hours of labor. She weighed in at
6 pounds, 7.7 ounces, and was
30 inches long. Writes Flame,
“She brings new meaning to the
word ‘wonderful.’ ”
“Shortly after arriving in
Brooklyn, N.Y., it came to my
attention that Mike DiMezza
(SFGI98) was living in the
neighborhood. Although
reminiscing about books is great
fun, the new bond between our
lives has been restoring his
beautiful brownstone and
discussing urban planning.
Thom Barry (SF03), a mutual
friend of ours, is also an integral
part of our new bond. Tom and I
worked together doing carpentry
in Marblehead, Mass,, and in
exchange he introduced me to
some great urban thinkers and
new wave music. Now, I am in
graduate school at the Pratt
Institute for urban design while
he has become a foreman in
Northampton, Mass. Synergies
abound!”
Suzannah Simmons (SF) is
entering her second year of law
school at Florida Coastal School
of Law in Jacksonville, Fla., with
an eye toward practicing real
estate and animal law. “My best
to SJC!” she writes.
Patrick B. Reed (AGI)
celebrated the birth of his first
child, daughter Lucille (Lucy),
on his 36th birthday in June.
2001
“Though I never attended the
campus here, I ended up finding
my way out to Santa Fe, where
I’ve been working in the art
world and pursuing my photog
raphy for the past three years,”
{The Colleges?. John's College ■ Fall 2005 }
Floye Heather Wells (A)
writes, “Just finished my
master’s degree in ecology at
Colorado State University in
Fort Collins and got a job teach
ing middle-school and high
school science out on the plains
of Colorado at the Prairie
School. Drop me a line if you
ever find yourself out this way:
floyewells@yahoo.com
�{Alumni Notes}
What’s Keeping You?
T
here’s an online community waiting for you to join.
About 2,300 alumni have registered to join the
St. John’s College Online Community since the
college launched the site last year. That leaves a
lot of Johnnies out there who have yet to register
and update their information (name, address.
occupation, e-mail). Your information can only be viewed by
other registered alumni, registration is fast and easy, and you
can choose which information you want available for other
alumni to view. To register, go to vww.stjohnscollege.edu and
click on Alumni.
Beyond the usual directory information, the site offers you a
place to show off pictures, set up buddy lists for friends you
frequently e-mail, and do
some online networking.
Later this fall, the college’s
Career Services offices plan
to begin building an online
resource for career net
working, connecting men
tors, and posting resumes.
Registered or not,
alumni can use the site to
learn about chapter
happenings, college events,
and St. John’s news.
Questions or suggestions?
Contact the Web master in
Annapolis: victoria. smith@
sjca.edu.
Classics in Santa Fe. It was
Oedipal, except I wanted to kill
my brothers and they wanted to
sleep with the tutor. One
brother, as well as Martha and
Ray Wallace, asked about the
lovely Ms. Schoux. Where are
you Ms. Schoux?
I spend my time between
live/work offices in NYC’s
Gramercy Park (where I lead a
Johnnie-style great books group)
and L.A.’s Hancock Park (where
I lead a great films group-you
have to go slow with Angelenos).
I can be reached at
Jim@Monk.com.”
2003
Meg Eisenhauer Barry and
Thom Barry (both SF) are
thrilled to welcome a daughter.
Aviva Thomas Barry was born at
home June 4 in Northampton,
Mass. “We can be reached at
m_eisenhauer@mac.com in case
you find yourself in western
Massachusetts!”
infantry platoon leader,” writes
Robert Morris (SF). “As an
infantry officer, I am being
afforded the opportunity to
attend some additional schooling
before I report to my unit. Right
now I am in Ranger School. It is
very challenging and extremely
arduous. I am about to begin my
third attempt to pass. The army
has taught me a lot. The army’s
lessons are not always fun, but
they are lessons that I never
would have learned from reading
and reflection. Later this year I
go to 2nd Brigade of the loth
Mountain Division at Fort
Drum, N.Y. I have a lot of
difficult work ahead of me, but it
ought to be rewarding in propor
tion to the challenge.”
Last summer Justine Stewart
(SF) finished up a year in
St. Cloud, Minn., where she has
been working as an EKG
technician. She was next off to
California for a two-month stint
as an outdoor instructor“leading groups of students on
camping trips and living out of
my car and a tent. I am nervous
and very excited.”
Rebecca A. Dwyer (SF) kept it
Jim Crotty (SFGI), is still
2002
Amelia Adams (A) writes,
“After returning from a year in
Zambia working with an NGO on
HIV prevention and treatment, I
have started at the School of
Medicine at Washington
University in St. Louis.”
John Cottrell (A) completed
law school at the University of
Richmond in December 2004
and passed the bar exam in April
2005. He is practicing law in
Alexandria, Va.
co-president of MONK, “the
company I co-founded several
kalpas ago with fellow “Monk,”
Michael Lane, as the publishing
arm of our travel quarterly
Monk: The Mobile Magazine,
www.Monk.com. MONK has
since birthed several offspring,
including seven-year-old Monk
Media, www.MonkMedia.net, a
cute and bubbly web and graphic
design firm; four-year-old Monk
Host, www.MonkHost.net, a hitech tomboy; and recent addition
Monk TV, which produces and
distributes the inflammatory
Crotty Farm Report, www.crottyfarmreport.com, among other
channels.
This past July I attended a
Freud seminar with my two older
brothers at St. John’s Summer
short: “I’m in China!”
What’s Up?
Michael Kopp (EC) and Jana
Phillips (SFGI) were married
May 22, 2005, in Sedona, Ariz.
After teaching in France for a
year, they are now living in
Denver, where Michael edits
children’s textbooks, and Jana is
a prison librarian. Michael has
also been accepted for graduate
study in an English Ph.D.
program to begin fall 2006.
The College wants to hear from
you. Call us, write us, e-mail us.
Let your classmates know what
you’re doing. The next issue
will be published in January;
deadline for the alumni notes
section is November 30.
Classnotes posted to the col
lege’s online community will
also be included in The College.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404;
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
2004
“Since graduation, I have been
commissioned in the Army as a
2nd lieutenant and trained as an
{The College -Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
�{AlumniProfile}
Just a Good Ol’ Boy
Chris Nelson, SFgg, Gives Dukes Fans the Scoop
Wi Jason A. Bielagus, SF98
t sounds like a prank,
but it’s the God-honest
truth: Chris Nelson
(SF99), entered a
competition to become
the vice president of
the CMT Dukes of Hazzard
Institute. To get the job, he
had to demonstrate fanatical
devotion to the 1980s televi
sion series and draw up a
marketing plan. (One idea:
sponsor a General Lee dog
sled in the Iditarod). He beat
out 1,900 other applicants,
debuting as the new VP at the
DukesFest in Bristol, Tenn.,
last June.
And-this is the part that
really sounds made-up-he will
earn $100,000 for a year of
watching Dukes ofHazzard
re-runs, writing a daily blog
about the episodes, and making periodic
public appearances in his official Dukes of
Hazzard Institute orange blazer.
The “Institute” is funded by CMT, a
country-music cable television channel
that airs reruns of the Dukes ofHazzard.
For those who missed it the first time
around, the show featured cousins Bo and
Luke Duke driving down the dirt roads of
Hazzard County in an orange ’69 Dodge
Charger, the General Lee. Their fetching
cousin, Daisy Duke, inspired a new fashion
trend in her cutoff jeans, and bumbling
sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane-firmly under the
wing of corrupt Boss Hog-was regularly
foiled by the clever Dukes.
To promote the series and the network,
CMT announced a nationwide search for a
vice president. Nelson, an aspiring
singer/songwriter who was then working
as a part-time temp, caught an ad for the
job on CMT and went after it wholeheart
edly, creating a Web site outlining his
campaign platform, sending telegrams to
the network’s executives, and writing
reams of Duke-inspired musings.
In his application. Nelson wrote: “The
Dukes ofHazzard is a wonderful program
because it delivers comedy, action, and a
Chris Nelson (SFgg) meets
THE FAMOUS GENERAL LeE.
I
positive message wrapped up in lovable
characters in a mythical place. It brings
joy to people’s lives one hour at a time. It is
my thought that the Dukes of Hazzard
Institute should mirror the series in this
way and strive to bring fun and enjoyment
to the legions of fans all over the world and
make some new ones in the process.”
Nelson was one of three people chosen
to be flown down to Nashville for intensive
interviews, round-table discussions, oncamera interviews, and a photo shoot with
the General Lee.
As VP of the Dukes of Hazzard Institute,
Nelson is tasked with watching the Dukes
ofHazzard on CMT and summarizing
each episode in his blog. In addition to
publishing a blog. Nelson also makes media
appearances promoting the institute.
For one such appearance. Nelson
appeared on the nationally broadcast Fox
and Friends in the Morning. Nelson came
on just after Ken Mehlman, chairman for
the Republican National Committee, and
just before singer Harry Connick, Jr. “That
gives you an idea of where my celebrity is
in the pecking order,” Nelson says.
On a day free from media appearances.
Nelson awakes in his Manhattan apartment
sometime before noon. After having some
{The College- St. John's College ■ Fall 2005 }
Nescafe while reading the
papers. Nelson does his
calisthenics, then settles
down to work on his blog.
Next, he might give a few
phone interviews and write
treatments extolling the
virtue of the Dukes. Evenings
are free for socializing.
Asked about the contribu
tion that the Dukes have
made to Western thought.
Nelson offers, “Part of the
reason why the show’s so
popular, why it’s so great, is
that you have muscle cars
driving around on dirt roads
crashing into each other, foxy
ladies in skimpy outfits, lots of explosions,
good fighting, great slapstick comedy, and
justice delivered in just under an hour.
That’s good, old-fashioned American
escapism.”
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Nelson
was “pretty directionless” after graduating
from St. John’s. “I had heard some people
were making money in this thing called
‘the Internet.’ So I moved to Austin, Texas,
began selling bandwidth for an Internet
company, and eventually ended up in
investor relations.”
After the tech bubble burst. Nelson
spent many lost months in Mexico, Cuba,
South America, and Colorado. The next
few years found him working a string of
jobs including hotel clerk, graphic
designer, and food writer.
Although his contract with CMT is only
for a year. Nelson hopes his experience will
open doors for him. “I’ve been talking a
little bit about being the president of the
My Two Dads Institute or the chief
financial officer of the Starsky & Hutch
Foundation,” he says,
Lookfor Nelson’s blog at
WWW. cmtdukesinstitute. com
�{Obituaries}
Santa Fe tutor Ralph
SwENTZEL, CIRCA 1969.
Rai,I’ll SwEMZELL, HA95
Santa Fe Tutor
Retired Santa Fe tutor Ralph Swentzell died
on June 16, 3005, following a lengthy strug
gle with prostate cancer.
Mr. Swentzell was born in East Paterson,
N.J., and attended Highlands University in
Las Vegas, N.M., where he earned his
degree in psychology in 1963. He joined the
faculty in Santa Fe in 1966 and retired in
3003. He was one of the most innovative
members of the faculty, having a profound
impact on the laboratory and music
tutorials, and contributing to an ongoing
dialogue concerning the language tutorials.
His extensive handwritten notes on all
subjects of the laboratory, mathematics,
and music tutorials were his means of
making the subjects completely his own,
including, for instance, a resolution of the
rod-and-slot paradox of special relativity.
He created a computer-based Chinese
language lexicon for the college’s Eastern
Classics program, and his computer
modeling of non-Euclidean geometry
yielded fascinating insights.
He was also adept in class discussions.
Above all, his persistent curiosity, spirit of
inquiry, and good-willed enthusiasm
inspired colleagues and students alike.
A memorial service for Mr. Swentzell is
planned for early fall in Santa Fe. The
College will publish selections from the
memorial service in an upcoming edition.
John Sarkissian, HA03
Annapolis Tutor
by Gerald Bunker
John Ludwig Sarkissian, a long-time tutor
at St. John’s College, died July ii, 3005, at
his home in Annapolis. He was born in
Chicago, eldest son of Eleisha and Araxie,
both natives of Istanbul
who fled the TurkishArmenian troubles. In
1939, he began his studies
in biology at the University
of Chicago, hut left the uni
versity in 1943 to enlist in
the Army. For the rest of his
life he delighted in regaling
his friends and family with
war stories, which may have
improved in the retelling.
Some facts are that he
initially trained at Princeton as a military
administrator in Italy. After the fall of Italy,
he shipped out to the Pacific as an
intelligence operative, was stationed in
New Guinea, and was part of the retaking
of Manila.
Resuming his academic career, he
received his B.S. from the University of
Illinois in 1946 and his M.A. in 1948, He
was an instructor in biological and physical
sciences at the University of Chicago, the
Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College, the
University of Indiana, and the University
of Illinois.
The high point of his career as a research
biologist came when he was awarded a
Fulbright Scholarship to the Institute of
Human Heredity at the University of
Bologna, Italy. In 1963, he came to
St. John’s, where he established a
sophomore program that taught biological
evolution through dissection.
Mr. Sarkissian was an ardent traveler and
naturalist. To the end of his life he remained
a voracious reader. After his retirement in
1984 he kept active in all his favorite activi
ties, becoming a docent at the Smithsonian
Institution and a lifelong student of world
history, Russian, French, Greek, and Latin.
He is survived by a daughter, Julia Oaten;
his former wife, Flor Bunker; and a brother,
Vincent.
Jerome LaPides, HA91
Board of Visitors and Governors
Jerome LaPides, who served on the
college’s Board of Visitors and Governors
for nearly two decades, died on May ii,
3005, at his home in Santa Fe. As a board
member from 1973-1991, LaPides was a
generous supporter of the college, having
{The College. St. /oZira’5 College ■ Fall 2005 }
43
established with his father, Joseph, the
LaPides Scholarship Fund in 1979. He also
played a key role in overseeing construction
of Santa Fe’s Meem Library.
Born in Baltimore, Mr. LaPides graduated
from the Naval Academy in 1951 and later
served as an Air Force captain stationed in
Japan. In 1956 he entered the corporate
world, joining the Pepsi-Cola Bottling
Company in Baltimore and opening the
company’s Annapolis location.
His extensive community service included
serving on the board of the Anne Arundel
Medical Center, and as a trustee of Key
School and Severn School. He was president
of the LaPides Foundation, which has
supported many different causes over
the years, including animal welfare,
community development, environment and
conservation, fine arts, higher education,
women’s issues, and child welfare.
In 1988, Mr. LaPides retired as the
president and owner of Pepsi-Cola Bottling
Company in Annapolis. After moving to
New Mexico, he and his wife. Allene,
opened the LaPides Gallery.
In addition to his wife, his survivors
include his son, John M. LaPides; his
daughters Ann L. Misenheimer and Jane R.
LaPides; and five grandchildren.
Admiral James Stockdale
Board of Visitors and Governors
Retired Vice Admiral James Stockdale,
who died in July at his home in California,
served on the college’s Board of Visitors
and Governors from 1981 to 1987. Admiral
Stockdale, a Navy pilot who endured seven
years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam,
became one of the most highly decorated
officers in the history of the Navy. He
received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s
highest tribute for valor in action.
Admiral Stockdale was born in Illinois and
graduated from the Naval Academy in 1947.
The Navy sent him to Stanford University
for a master’s degree, and there he became
enamored of the Greek stoic philosophers.
Admiral Stockdale served on the USS
Oriskany and flew 301 missions before he
was shot down in September 1965. Shackled
in leg irons for two years, and in solitary
confinement for four, he endured torture
and degradation at the Hoa Lo Prison, but
would not give in to his captors.
continued on nextpage
�44
continuedfromp. 40
Admiral Stockdale and his fellow prisoners
were freed in 1973. He served as president of
the Naval War College, where he also taught
philosophy and developed an ethics course,
and later was president of The Citadel in
South Carolina. In 1981, he joined the
Hoover Institution, where he was a senior
research fellow.
Erik S. Kristensen, AGI99
Navy Seal
by Andrew Ranson, AGIoo
Erik Kristensen, 33, a lieutenant command
er in the Navy SEALs, died June 18, 2005,
in Afghanistan. He was leading a rescue
mission when his Chinook helicopter was
shot down by Afghan insurgents.
Erik and I were fast friends the minute we
met as classmates in the Graduate Institute
in January 2000.1 had just moved to
Annapolis from San Diego; Erik, a 1995
graduate of the Naval Academy, had lived
there off and on for years and was teaching
English at the academy. We spent hours
upon hours talking about everything we
could think of that winter, and during the
spring, our conversations continued as we
played Frisbee on front campus. Erik lived
the examined life that Socrates spoke of; he
was the best example of self-reflection
I’ve known.
Now that he’s gone, those of us who were
close to him have been examining our own
lives, noting how he influenced us. He had
many gifts; he was a terrific writer and had a
fantastic sense of humor. Always the life of
the party, Erik stuffed a centerpiece into his
shirt pocket and then hammed it up for the
camera at my wedding. He was smart and
creative, laid-back and intense, curious
and fearless.
Since he had grown up a Navy brat and
lived all over the world, he was great at
staying in touch with people over great
distances and long stretches of time. He had
a keen appreciation for the little things in
Ufe: the perfect fish taco, good music from
all genres, a well-made movie. He was a
wonderful listener, making you feel that
what you said really mattered. Erik rarely
complained about anything; he seemed to
see the bright side of life at every moment.
One of his most endearing qualities was that
he was such a dependable and supportive
friend. His generosity, selflessness, and
compassion for others were unparalleled.
{Obituaries}
Erik was sent to SEAL training midway
through his studies and had planned to
return in a few years, when his Navy
commitment was finished. He loved the
contemplative life and discussing the
Program so much, I had difficulty under
standing how he could join a Special Forces
team where action and danger dominated
over contemplation. I realized only after he
died that he truly believed that his duty was
''Those who delivered
his eulogies spoke ofhis
insatiable thirstfor life,
his compassion, and his
desire to connect with
those he loved.
Andrew Ranson (AGIoo)
to make sure that in potentially volatile
situations, there was someone in a position
to make decisions who had contemplated
the larger truths in life. He knew that others
depended on him for just this.
At his funeral, more than 2,000 friends
and family members filled the Naval
Academy Chapel. Those who delivered his
eulogies spoke of his insatiable thirst for
life, his compassion, and his desire to
connect with those he loved. He was laid to
rest with full honors on Hospital Point at the
Naval Academy.
Since Socrates often came up in our
conversations, I thought it fitting that this
passage from The Republic leapt off the page
at me recently. I picked the book up, think
ing of Erik and how our friendship was
cemented over discussions of it. Erik would
blush at being compared to Socrates’
description of a philosopher, but I think
those who knew Erik will find it quite appro
priate. Socrates asks Glaucon, “But the one
who is willing to taste every kind of learning
with gusto, and who approaches learning
with delight, and is insatiable, we shall justly
assert to be a philosopher, won’t we?”
(475d).
Farewell to a great man, a true Johnnie,
and a wonderful friend.
{The College. 5f. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
John David Hindle-Hardt
AGI96
A generous nature and giving spirit is
reflected in an essay John David HindleHardt (AGI96) wrote on hospitality: “The
Greek word Philoxenia means love of
strangers. We are apt to forget in our culture
that hospitality is not something we extend
to friends or neighbors, but rather to the
stranger, the outcast.. .The Latin word
(hospes, hospitis) specifies the particular
shape this love takes: the offering of a place
to those who have none. . .”
Mr. Hindle-Hardt, who was killed in an
automobile accident on September 9, 2004,
in Portland, Maine, had dedicated much of
his life to helping those who might be
considered outcasts of society. He believed
that all people deserve to be treated with
dignity and respect, and this shone through
in his life’s work and in his friendships.
At the time of his death, he was employed
by Creative Work Systems, an organization
that sought to enable persons with cogni
tive, physical, and psychiatric handicaps to
gain self-sufficiency. Prior to working in
Maine, Mr. Hindle-Hardt had worked as a
volunteer for a residential community for
the handicapped in Toronto. For three
years, he was residential director of a men’s
home in Richmond, Va. In addition to
working as a teacher for several years, he
also tutored Asian immigrants at a refugee
and resettlement center and taught adults
how to read in Annapolis. In these settings,
“his compassion and kindness and giving
nature found true expression,” according to
his friend Joel Werkema.
Those who knew him describe Mr. HindleHardt as someone with a great sense of
humor and a serious purpose in fife. “When
you were with him, he made you feel as
though you were the center of attention,”
said Paula Swann (AGI97). “And if he wasn’t
making you laugh, he would involve you in
deep and meaningful conversations about
academics, friendship, and life.”
“It was common knowledge that amidst all
of J.D.’s hilarious stories and jokes there
would be these sensitive and supportive
words of encouragement right when
someone needed them most,” said Jennifer
Stanbro (AGI96).
Hardt is survived by his mother, Martha
Hindle-Hardt Rice; his stepfather, Donald
N. Rice; and his sister, Meg Hardt.
�{Obituaries}
Tevtna Benedict, SF73
Tevina Benedict, 54, was killed in a fall on
May 7, aoof), while hiking on the Oregon
coast. Born Decemher a, 1950, in Chicago,
Ill., she became a passionate advocate for
social justice after graduating from
St. John’s. She worked on the New Mexico
Review and participated in the founding of
La Clinica de la Gente.
After moving to Portland in 1980,
Ms. Benedict served on the staff of the
Governor’s Commission of the Uninsured,
on the board of Neighborcare Health Clinic,
and for Oregon Health Decisions. She
staffed the group that created the first
Oregon Advance Directive/living will.
After moving to Eugene in 1989 she worked
at the Oregon Department of Health Policy
and with the Oregon Health Action
Campaign to support and expand the found
ing of what is now the Oregon Health Plan.
She later earned a master’s degree in public
health policy from the University of Oregon.
Her survivors include her husband, Dave
Barta, and daughter. Erica Benedict-Barta.
45
Ellen Becker, SFGI87
Ellen “Ellie” Becker died at her home in
Santa Fe on June ii, 2005, at age 54, from
cancer. She leaves behind her husband, Ron
Hale, former director of Career Planning
and part-time tutor on the Santa Fe cam
pus; sons Jesse, 27, and Luke, 24; and two
grandchildren. Ms. Becker worked as an
editor, journalist, and writer, including
stints at Mothering Magazine, the Museum
of New Mexico, and at newspapers in Santa
Fe and Albuquerque. In addition to her
master’s degree from St. John’s, she had
received a bachelor’s degree from Goddard
College in Plainfield, Vt.
internship and residency in internal
medicine at Union Memorial Hospital.
From 1966 to 1968, he served in the Navy.
He joined Anne Arundel Medical Center in
Annapolis in 1970 and maintained a
private practice.
“He was one of the most eminent cardiol
ogists in the area, a Vietnam war veteran,
and a wonderful person all around,” said
Annapolis tutor Tom May.
Dr. Brimhall is survived by his wife, two
children, and two grandchildren.
Also noted:
Robert Gamble, AGI97, April 2005
Rodney Brimhall, AGI89
William C. Hill, class of 1946, December
Dr. Rodney Lee Brimhall, an internist and
director of a cardiac rehabilitation program
at, died July 30 in Annapolis. He was 69.
In the midst of his successful medical
career. Dr. Brimhall enrolled in the
Graduate Institute program at St. John’s.
Dr. Brimhall was born and raised in
Jacksonville, Fla. He earned his medical
degree from the University of Florida
College of Medicine and completed an
2004
George Lyon, Jr. class of 1940, January
2005
Robert Scott Massey, SF70, July 2004
Henry Clay Smith, class of 1934, July 15,
2005
John B. Traci y III, A83, May 2005
A Poem for Michael Slakey
An obituary for Michael Slakey
(A85), who died of cancer
earlier this year in France, ran
in the Spring 2005 edition of
The College magazine. We add
this remembrance of Mr. Slakey,
taken from the many tributes
from the classmates who spoke
at a memorial service for him
earlier this year. It was written
by Eric Vesper (A86).
The Old Rooms
— For Fred and Lesley Israel
When Slakey and I correspond
in the high language, I address
him as S. Croft and he calls me Leopold.
Shut off from one another like rooms,
passing letters as if through cracks
under doors - we take them like wafers,
transubstantiate tokens of the land
near St. Michael’s where we learned to
laugh
at ourselves. Once I found Slakey in town
Michael Slakey with his
CHILDREN
slowly rising to meet the swift
tide.
Perhaps the fabric of old
novels weaves
into the present in ways we
don’t see yet,
asleep in a graveyard on the long stone
of S. Croft Register. We know a priest
who hunts. He curses us for driving in the
fields
because geese won’t land when they see
signs
of humans. It is easier to ignore the
clergy,
for geese and humans, when they don’t
have guns.
the turn of the binding
opening a place
where we see ourselves folded into the
page.
We no longer have need of prophecy.
We have given names to the friends in our
story,
poured late libations on still embers
and watched the sun rise through the
shelves
By day, we plug our ears with electric
guitars.
At night we open them to the music
in the fire, the slow burn a symphony
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
of old rooms where we rest, where even
dust,
floating in the light, or pulled into
corners,
proves forces are at work against us.
�46
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
Dear Alumni,
As a student, I
didn’t want to be
bothered with the
administrative life
of the college. I
cared whether
tutors were focused
on their work, facili
ties were clean and
safe, lab equipment maintained, and food
and mail were delivered on time. Like most
adolescents, I missed the connections
between these concerns and the focus on
truth and beauty that filled my time with
friends and books in conversation. My
mother’s checkbook and the college’s
income statement seemed irrelevant then.
Today I understand-for myself and my
clients-how administrative decisions
directly affect real experience every day.
Today, alumni are engaged in all facets
of the administrative life of the college.
Chris Nelson (SF70) is president of the
Annapolis campus. Both deans are alumni:
Michael Dink (A75) in Annapolis and
David Levine (A67) in Santa Fe. Each of
these alumni and many other faculty and
staff have committed their professional
lives to the college’s academic and institu
tional well-being.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowforinformation
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-275-9012
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Diane Cowan
617-666-4381
dianecowan@rcn.com
AUSTIN
John Strange
210-392-5506
Bev Angel
512-926-7808
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn
lightburn@
earthlink.net
Others integrate concerns for the col
lege with their diverse professional and
personal lives as volunteers in a variety of
college programs. Philanthropia is an all
alumni organization that supports the
fund-raising activities of the college. The
Alumni Association Board of Directors,
though an independently chartered organi
zation, works with the college to connect
more alumni, more often, and more richly.
Local Alumni Association chapters, hosts
for prospective receptions, active network
ers, and class leaders for homecomings and
special events-all make significant contri
butions of time and attention to be sure the
college is well cared for and healthy.
Another important role for alumni in
the college is on the Board of Visitors and
Governors (BVG). This body is responsible
for governance and oversight of all aspects
of the college. As you can imagine, alumni
are engaged in many ways in leadership of
this body. The chair of the board is an
alumna, Sharon Bishop (A65). Of the total
60 members of the BVG, currently 36 are
alumni of the graduate or undergraduate
programs, and seven are honorary alumni
who have been recognized by the Alumni
Association for their contributions to the
St. John’s community.
Nine of these BVG members are
nominated and elected by the Alumni
Association to serve as contributing
participants in decisions that affect the
good of the college and its broader
community of alumni. In July, three new
Alumni Association members joined the
board. Michael MacDonald (SF76) has a
professional life in the record production
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Lexy
Bartlette
817-721-9112
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein
720-746-1496
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
business. He lives in New York City. Sanjay
Poovadan (SF83) lives in El Prado, N. M.,
where he farms and maintains a business
consulting practice. Joel Ard (Ag5) is an
attorney in Washington, D.C. These three
join Susan Allen (SFGI89), Robert Bienenfeld (SF80), Evan Dudik (A72), Bill Fant
(A7g), Thomas Stern (SF68), and Steve
Thomas (SF74) as Alumni Association
representatives to the Board of Visitors
and Governors. Our thanks to each of
them and thanks to all alumni who commit
portions of their busy lives to build and
maintain the institutional strength of
St. John’s College.
If you are interested in exploring ways
you can be more involved, please contact
me (geoyang@hsdinstitute.org or 763-7837206) or Annapolis alumni director Jo Ann
Mattson (jamattson@sjca.edu, or 410-2956ga6).
Don’t forget the wonderful online com
munity that keeps you in touch with the
college and with alumni around the globe.
As of today, 2,295 alumni have joined the
community. That is almost a third of our
goal-the 9,000 alumni of St. John’s
College. To register, to encourage others,
or to use the community to contact your
friends, go to; www.stjohnscollege.edu
and click on Alumni.
I look forward to seeing you online or at
our next homecoming celebration!
Sincerely,
Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76)
President
St. John’s College Alumni Association
NEW YORK
Daniel Van Doren
914-949-6811
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619-423-4972
NORTHERN CALIF.
Deborah Farrell
415-731-8804
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
5^15-465-0^44
SEATTLE
Amina Brandt
206-465^781
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-4151
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey
lake@law-works .com
{The College -Sf. John’s College ■ Fall aooj }
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Deborah Papier
202-387-4520
drpapier®
starpower.net
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Julia Ward
413-648-0064
�{Alumni Association News}
In South Florida, a Multicultural
Group Savors Conversation
A certain half-truth makes
it easy for Pedro J. Mar
tinez-Fraga (A84) to get a
table at a favorite Miami
restaurant. “If I call and
use the name Pedro Mar
tinez, they think it’s the
pro baseball player, and I
always get a table,’” he
says. But a thirst for deep
er truths inspired Mar
tinez-Fraga, a partner with
an international law firm,
to form the South Florida
alumni group last year.
The South Florida
group is one of several
informal groups around
the country bringing
Johnnies together for sem
inars and social gather
ings. Some just want to
keep the conversations
going; others hope to eventually form an
official Alumni Association chapter. A little
more than a year ago, Pittsburgh Johnnies
gained their charter as an official chapter.
In Miami, the group has been united by
its “collective love of conversation,” says
Martinez-Fraga. Jon Sackson (A69) co
founded the group and helps coordinate
events, which so far have focused on revisit
ing Program books. At one of their meetings
last spring, Annapolis tutor Nick Maistrellis
and his wife, Judy (A71), joined the chapter
for a seminar on the last four books of
Plato’s Republic.
“We savor the process of getting
together, talking, laughing, and sharing a
time and space where our only concerns
are limited to questioning and discussing
those issues that have long fascinated the
authors of the great and greatest books
written in our Western tradition,” says
Martinez-Fraga.
He describes the group as a “vivid multi
cultural, professional tapestry” including
lawyers, bankers, teachers, an architect,
and a self-employed information processor.
Some travel from as far as 50 miles away to
attend gatherings. The group votes on what
to read, when to meet, which tutors to
invite to visit.“That the books can bring us
together despite the assaults of everyday
life, domestic demands, professional
47
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
All alumni have automatic membership in
the St. John’s College Alumni Association.
The Alumni Association is an independent
organization, with a Board of Directors elect
ed by and from the alumni body. The board
meets four times a year, twice on each campus,
to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of
the association. This newsletter within
The College magazine is sponsored by the
Alumni Association and communicates
association news and events of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary -Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair-
Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or tt6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
The Miami alumni reading Group stemmed
FROM Pedro Martinez-Fraga’s Dedication
TO St. John’s.
exigencies, and personal preferences, in
itself is a source of marvelous wonder,” says
Martinez-Fraga.
These Johnnies’ devotion to the college
extends to the famous St. John’s seminar
chair. At their initiative, the bookstore in
Annapolis worked with the chair’s manufac
turer, E.A. Clore and Sons, to make a chair
with the St. John’s logo available for pur
chase. “Like the Johnnies themselves, these
chairs are so similar, yet so individual and
unique,” Martinez-Fraga says.
Here’s a look at two other alumni reading
groups and what brings them together:
Western New England
Peter Weis (SF84), a librarian at Northfield
Mount Hermon School, hosts conversations
at a seminar-style table in his home in
Montague, Mass.:
“We’re low key, yet serious at the same
time. We meet on Sunday afternoons every
two months. There has always been convivi
ality and food but we focus on the discus
sion. Speaking for myself, it’s nice to get
together for a serious conversation about
what on the surface is a neutral topic, not
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall aooj }
politics, not current events. When we dis
cussed the Constitution it was amazing how
long the conversations stayed away from
current events-it was really about the
document. We don’t stick exclusively to
Program readings. The first seminar, about
two years ago, was on Flannery O’Connor.”
Salt Lake City
Erin Hanlon (SF03), a graduate student in
biology at the University of Utah, launched
the Salt Lake City alumni group last year:
“I formed the alumni group because I
really missed St. John’s and my fellow John
nies. It was a year since I had graduated and
I had just started graduate school at a large
research university. The difference between
the university and St. John’s was so great
that I felt a great deal of culture shock. I
missed being more active about my educa
tion. . .Our first seminar was on Martin
Luther Kings Jr.’s birthday, and so we read
King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Some
thing in that made us think of the funeral
oration of Pericles. From there we went to
Job, then the Myth ofSisyphus by Camus.
Our next seminar is going to be
on The Dream ofa Ridiculous Man by
Dostoevski. Occasionally the readings and
seminars are more social. Robert Sacks led
our last seminar and his visit inspired a bit
more socializing.
�48
{St. John’sForever}
Room for
Improvement
he college issues
no formal grade
report today
(students can ask
the Registrar for
their grades), but
in 1873, the parents of prep
students at St. John’s received a
bi-monthly grade report. This
featured a “Scale of Merit as
applied to Conduct and Studies”
that started with “excellent” (5)
and went to “blameworthy” (o).
On the back was this printed
exhortation from James M. Gar
nett, principal; “I beg leave to
call attention to the accompany
ing Tabular Statement, in which
you will find a Report of the sev
eral studies pursued by your Son
(or Ward) during the last two
months in this institution and
also of his proficiency and stand
ing in each separate study. The
Scale of Merit explains the nota
tion employed. All marks falling
below 21/2 are meant to signify
that his deficiency is so serious
as to call for animadversion,
deserving to be more or less
emphatic in proportion as his
grade approximates more or less
nearly to o.”
Grades were earned through a
student’s “daily recitations”
along with written examinations
held at the end of the term. A
student whose recitations and
examinations “evince an inca
pacity on his part” to pursue the
studies of his class could face being
knocked back a grade.
This report issued to Hopewell H. Bar
roll of the second prep class on April 26,
1873, shows good grades for arithmetic,
history, English grammar, and modern
geography. Garnett added a personal
remark: “Doing well, but room for
improvement in Latin.” It’s possible that
T
Barroll-later to become a prominent
Chestertown, M<L, lawyer-received a
similar report for his son, L. Wethered
Barroll, a member of the class of 1907.
Garnett was president of St. John’s from
1870-1880; he later went on to become a
professor at the University of Virginia.
{The College- St. John’s College . Fall 2005 }
H.H. Barroll’s report card shows no
“Blameworthy” grade.
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Windy City Shindig
umni in
Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco
have had the opportunity to attend a
special alumni gathering featuring
Christopher Nelson, president of the
Annapolis campus, and Michael Peters,
president in Santa Fe. Now it’s
Chicago’s turn.
Chicago-area alumni are invited to the
“Evening of Conversation” on Tuesday,
Nov. 15, at the Standard Cluh, 320 South
Plymouth Court. The event has a simple
format: socializing begins at 6 p.m. with
beer, wine, and hors d’oeuvres. At 7:15,
i
the presidents provide an overview of the 9
college’s academic and financial status,
talk about plans for the future Capital
Campaign at the college, answer questions,
and visit with alumni. The event ends at
about 9 p.m., but Johnnies have been
known to gather in small groups and keep
the conversation going.
The event is free of charge. For more
information, or to RSVP, call Gina Lee
in the Annapolis Advancement office at
410-295-5557 or e-mail gina.lee@sjca.edu.
More events are planned in other
for 2006.
Matthew Reiter (sFoa) and
Katherine Greco (sFoa) were among
THE ALUMNI WHO TURNED OUT FOR A
GATHERING IN PHILADELPHIA.
Santa Fe Summer Alumni Week
July
aoo6
Santa Fe Homecoming
Julya8-3O, aoo6
nd
Homecoming in Santa Fe. This year,
a special dinner for all alumni, part of the
college’s upcoming Capital Campaign,
launches the weekend, with picnics,
seminars, and parties continuing through
the weekend.
Annapolis Homecoming
Sept. 29-Oct.i, 2006.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 }
For information on events, contact:
Jo Ann Mattson
Office of Alumni Activities, Annapolis
410-626-2531
alumni@sjca.edu
Marnelli Hamilton
Office of Alumni and Parent Activities,
Santa Fe
505-984-6103
alumni@sicsf.edu
�Periodicals
SIJOHN’S COLLEGE
Postage Paid
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
Published
by the
Communications Office
P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
address service requested
»»«»«*»»»«»» DI GIT Q7529
S2SO Pl 15976
ANNl
MS. AMV MCCOHHELL FBftHKLlH
HC 74 BOX 24512
BL PBftBO HM 87529-9540
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
Description
An account of the resource
The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Language
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English
Identifier
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thecollege2001
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
48
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The College, Fall 2005
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 31, Issue 3 of The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2005.
Creator
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St. John's College
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, MD
Date
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2005-09
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Language
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English
Identifier
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The College Vol. 31, Issue Fall 2005
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Dempsey, Patricia
Hartnett, John
Behrens, Jennifer
Bielagus, Jason
Goyette, Barbara
Maguran, Andra
Mattson, Jo Ann
Naone, Erica
Vega, Libby
White, Roseanna
Johnson, David
Pattenroth, Kim
Marmion, Simon
Sullivan, Ezra
Stone, Donald
Eoyang, Glenda H.
The College
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