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�On Melville
n an acclaimed new biography of Herman Melville ^Melville: His World and
Work), Andrew Delbanco writes of how Melville drew on his experiences as a
seafarer to create his masterwork, Moby-Dick. However, Melville was at a
point in his literary career where he was ready to go beyond the adventure
stories of his popular earlier novels, Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket.
During a picnic on Monument Mountain, not far from Melville’s country home, the
Melville had been engaged in extensive reading, and a fateful meeting-with
author took cover during a rainstorm with Nathaniel Hawthorne, then 46 and much
another author in 1850 had such a powerful influence on him that he
admired by the younger writer. The two hours the men spent in conversation, according
approached his work-in-progress with an entirely new vision.
to Delbanco, left Melville filled with new aspirations. After that meeting, he revised
his novel with perspective gained from all the great works he had immersed himself in:
the Bible, Paradise Lost, Wc. Aeneid, Frankenstein, and Shakespeare’s tragedies.
He accomplished a “stylistic breakthrough,” Delbanco tells us, but the transformation
went much deeper: “In his fever of creation, Melville became Emerson’s proverbial poet,
whose ‘imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to
embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind.’ His book opened out into
the panorama of history and myth to which he had been exposed in his reading, from the
Western scriptures to Eastern tales of dervishes and devil worshippers.”
The publication of Moby-Dick in September 1851 came during a remarkable period for
American literature, when Americans were struggling with soul-wrenching issues such
as slavery which would determine the character of our nation. Between 1850 and 1855,
seven important books were published: Emerson’s Representative Men-, Thoreau’s
Walden, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and The House ofSeven Gables, Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass, and Melville’s Moby-Dick and Pierre.
Moby-Dick
a great commercial disappointment, selling only 2,300 copies in its
first months. The reviews were mixed. “The intense Captain Ahab is too long drawn out;
something more of him might, we think, be left to the reader’s imagination,” wrote the
reviewer for Literary World. The London Morning Post-was more insightful, if not
exactly prophetic: “There is much that is incredible and a little that is incomprehensible
in this latest effort of Mr. Melville’s wayward and romantic pen; but despite its occasional
extravagancies, it is a book of extraordinary merit, and one which will do great things for
the literary reputation of its author.”
His next novel, Pierre, drew on Melville’s life story, growing up in a family of
distinction but greatly reduced circumstances. His hopes of surviving on his literary
efforts crushed, Melville took a menial job as a customs inspector. He died in debt and
obscurity in 1891. Billy-Budd, a book that alternates with Benito Cereno on the reading
list for senior seminar today, was greeted with critical acclaim when published in 1924.
Johnnies who enjoy making literary excursions can visit Arrowhead, the 1780 farm
house in Pittsfield, Mass., where Melville wrote his great novel. Those whose devotion to
the novel goes even further may want to take part in one of several annual marathon
readings Moby-Dick, such as one held aboard the Charles W. Morgan, the last
surviving wooden whaling vessel, or another held at the New Bedford Whaling Museum,
not far from where Melville shipped out on the Achushnet in 1841.
-RII
I
STJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS . SANTA FE
The College (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly by
St. John’s College, Annapohs, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
Rosemary Harty, editor
Patricia Dempsey,
managing editor
John Hartnett (SF83),
Santa Fe editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Annapolis
410-626-2539
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
Contributors
Sus3an Borden (A87)
Barbara Goyette (A73)
Caroline Knapp (SF99)
Andra Maguran
Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
Erica Naone (A05)
Chris Utter (A06)
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�"I "I
College
Vol
The
ZINE FOR Alumni of St. John’s College
y
Annapolis •
{Contents}
PAGE
IO
DEPARTMENTS
Santa Fe Welcomes a
President
At his Inauguration in October, President
Michael Peters received a warm welcome
and pledges of support from both the
St. John’s and Santa Fe communities.
PAGE
Iz|
Lives in their Hands
8
LETTERS
9
HISTORY
Bibliofile
Peter Pesic takes up a standard
childhood question.
Linda Weiner considers the limitations
of science.
Losing Moby
PAGE
Miss Brann Honored by the NEH
Santa Fe GI Program Supports Teachers
Intellectual Fisticuffs in Annapolis
Fishpond Renovations
Johnnies on the Water
Helping New Orleans
Grant Aids in Shoreline Restoration
30
20
How Moby-Dick has submerged and
resurfaced over the years offers a bit of
insight into decisions about the college’s
reading list.
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Gil Crandall (class 011936) shares
memories of being a “rat.”
Working with wood, metal, and glass,
four Johnnies make beautiful and
enduring objects.
PAGE
a
3a ALUMNI NOTES
PAGE
18
PROFILES
3a Joseph Houseal (A84) follows his love of
26
dance to the Himalayas.
36 Fighting fear with reason; David Veazey
O, Pioneers!
(A97) fights a deadly disease.
39 Shana Hack (A95) follows a dream.
Homecoming in Annapolis features a
tribute to the women of the Class of 1955.
41 Entrepreneur Paul Laur (SFGI95) keeps
family at the heart of his business.
48 OBITUARIES
Remembering Santa Fe Tiitor
Ralph Swentzell.
48 STUDENT VOICES
PAGE
26
After Katrina: Writer Sara Roahen (SF94)
describes a visit home.
50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
ON THE COVER
Herman Melville
Illustration by DavidJohnson
5a ST. John’s FOREVER
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Miss Brann GJoes to the White House
Annapolis Tutor is one of Twelve NEH Medalists
November lo and ii
were whirlwind days for
long-time Annapolis
tutor Eva Brann: feted at
an award dinner hosted
by the National Endow
ment for the Humanities
in Washington, D.C.,
meeting George W. and
Laura Bush in the Oval
Office, and being one of
the guests of honor at a
State Dinner with lumi
naries including Judith
Martin (Miss Manners)
and actor Robert Duval.
But what is one of the
first things she mentions
when asked to recount
the experience? The
books she was given.
One was a novel, Henry
and Clara, written by
NEH’s acting deputy chairman, Tom Mallon, who sat at her table
during the awards dinner. “It is about Henry Rathbone, who was in
the box with Lincoln when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at
Ford’s Theatre. He later goes stark raving mad and kills his wife.
Thebookwas very well done,” Miss Brann says. The second was
Thieves ofBaghdad, a new work published by a fellow honoree,
Col. Matthew Bogdanos, who wrote about the efforts he led to save
Iraq’s antiquities. “It is a thriller,” Miss Brann says. “The work he
did required courage and ingenuity.”
In addition to bringing home a couple of very good books,
there was another tremendously gratifying aspect to the events.
Miss Brann says. Both President Bush and NEH Chairman Bruce
Cole referred to St. John’s as a “national treasure,” something that
caused her to glow with pride. “It is nice to know that the college
has a reputation in Washington and with the NEH that is real and
serious,” she says.
Miss Brann learned at the end of October that she was selected
to receive the National Humanities Medal, given in recognition
of outstanding scholarship. The honor is awarded to those
“whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the
humanities, broadened citizens’ engagement with the humanities,
or helped preserve and expand America’s access to important
humanities resources.”
The news came from Mr. Cole, who phoned her personally. “I was
dumbstruck,” Miss Brann recalls. Soon after, she received a call
from the White House social secretary, who filled her in on the
protocol for the White House ceremony with the President and the
State Dinner. Miss Brann, who gets by with the most basic of
wardrobes, was forced to go on a shopping spree, buying three
outfits. She added costume jewelry that has been in her family for
decades. “My father was a doctor in Brooklyn, and when patients
had no money to pay, they
would bring him their
jewelry,” she explains.
Miss Brann could
choose three guests to
accompany her; she
invited her pubUsher and
good friend Paul Dry and
his wife. Cede, of
Philadelphia. The third
invitation went to
Annapolis President
Christopher Nelson
(SF70). The three
attended a reception and
dinner at the Madison
Hotel, where Miss Brann
was pleased to meet one of
her personal heroines,
Judith Martin. “I told her,
‘you’re the ruler of my
life! ’ She was very nice.”
The next morning.
Miss Brann, her guests,
Meeting President George W. Bush
AND First Lady Laura Bush was
and other honorees were
EXCITING, BUT THE BEST PART, ACCORDING
picked up by bus and
TO Christopher Nelson and Eva
brought to the White
Brann, was hearing St. John’s praised
House. One by one, the
AS A “national treasure.”
honorees were led into
the Oval Office. “I went in
and Mrs. Bush and the
President greeted me very kindly,” she says. “We had our picture
taken, and the President said, ‘you have a nice smile! ’ He was very
fit and very friendly.” The President hung her medal around her
neck, and soon all the medalists and their guests were gathered in
the Oval Office. “After talking with Miss Manners, the President
said, ‘I think now that I’ll send you over to the Congress.’ ”
The President told his guests about some of the famous items in
the Oval Office, including the Resolute desk, made from the
timbers of the H.M.S. Resolute, a gift from Queen Victoria to
President Hayes. “Then he said he had to go-’I’m going to meet
the president of Yemen,’ he said, ‘to talk to him very seriously
about terrorism.’ ”
Many speeches followed at the NEH ceremony at the Metropol
itan Club. “Again, the college was very much to the fore,”
Miss Brann said. Next, the honorees were brought to the NEH
Building for a panel discussion. “I was asked whom I would most
like to meet among the dead-I said Lincoln.” St. John’s student
Mark McClay (A09), whose father. Bill McClay (A73), is a member
of the National Humanities Council, attended the discussion.
“It was very nice to have a student there,” Miss Brann says. “I made
him absent from lab.”
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
continued on nextpage
�{From the Bell Towers}
Supporting Teachers
A Generous Gift Will Provide Santa Fe
GI Scholarships
Robert Warren (SFGI93) and his
wife, Carol, signed a planned
giving agreement that
establishes a scholarship for
working teachers pursuing
master’s degrees in the
Graduate Institute in Santa Fe.
The agreement, signed in
December, will provide financial
assistance to students attending
either the Liberal Arts or the
Eastern Classics programs who
are full-time primary or
secondary school teachers and
living and working in New
Mexico. The need-based scholar
ship may be granted to either
full-time or part-time students
in the graduate program. The
scholarship, tentatively valued
at between $325,000 and
$475,000, will be funded by a
percentage of the Warrens’
residuary estate.
The Warrens believe in the
value of a St. John’s education
and are particularly interested in
supporting the Graduate Insti
tute. Moreover, they want their
gift to recognize the value of the
GI to individual teachers living
and working in New Mexico
because they believe the
program enhances teachers’
effectiveness in the classroom.
When he attended the Grad
uate Institute from 1991 to 1993,
Bob Warren saw educators who
were committed to teaching and
to learning but who did not have
the resources to complete their
graduate studies in the same
timeframe as other students.
“I was with a number of teachers
who were doing the GI one-third
of a segment at a time. The
reason was money,” he says.
Warren is glad to be able to
help teachers who must take out
loans. “If we can help free
someone to get out from under
that rock of graduate school
debt, then it’s undeniably a
worthwhile undertaking,”
he says.
Krishnan Venkatesh, director
of the Graduate Institute, says
that teachers need this kind of
assistance. In New Mexico, the
average starting salary for
teachers is approximately
$27,500.
The Warren Family Scholar
ship at St. John’s College is the
Warren’s fourth endowment to a
college. They have established
and funded scholarships at his
and Carol’s alma maters, Hobart
and William Smith College in
Geneva, New York, at Cathohc
University’s Columbus School of
Law, where Bob earned his J.D.,
and a single funded scholarship
to enable an underprivileged
Seneca Indian girl to attend a
private elementary and
secondary school in Bob’s
hometown of Buffalo, N.Y.
For Bob Warren, creating the
Graduate Institute scholarship is
something he has wanted to do
for a long time. He hopes that
Carol Warren, Santa Fe
President Mike Peters,
Robert Warren (SFGI93), and
Santa Fe GI Director Krishnan
Venkatesh celebrate a new
SCHOLARSHIP THE WaRRENS HAVE
Others will follow in his foot
steps; in particular, he would
like to see more support for the
Graduate Institute in Santa Fe.
“Education is everything,” he
says. “What’s happened to the
idea that anyone who could do
well academically could receive
a higher education in this
country? It’s become reprehensibly expensive, curtailing that
opportunity for many who
deserve better.”
Santa Fe president Mike
Peters was delighted with the
Warrens’ support of the
Graduate Institute. “This is the
kind of continuing commitment
to the college that is really
vital,” he says.
While the Warrens’ scholar
ship agreement will help
Graduate Institute teachers in
Santa Fe at some time in the
future, the college’s own
National Educator’s Grant is
available now to support
teachers in the GI on both
campuses. For full-time public
or private school teachers with
at least three years of teaching
experience, the college will
grant a scholarship to pursue
either of the college’s graduate
programs. The grant provides
one-third of either program’s
tuition. Administrators,
curriculum developers, and
other educational professionals
are also eligible for this new
grant.
—AndraMaguran
ENDOWED.
continued
After resting and changing into her formal wear, it was back to
the White House for the State Dinner. “It was very elegant, without
being overpowering,” Miss Brann says of the event. “There were
endless, beautiful corridors, a quartet playing Mozart.” She and
President Nelson took their places in the receiving line, “and this
was really the high point,” Miss Brann says, “President Bush said,
‘Good evening, Eva. You have a wonderful college.’ ”
Miss Brann was seated at a table with Mrs. Bush. “We sat down to
a wonderful dinner,” followed by a performance by Allen Toussaint,
a jazz musician and composer who had lost his New Orleans home in
Hurricane Katrina.
Miss Brann tried with no success to find out who nominated her
for the award. After the story hit the national news, she received
warm letters from alumni all over the country. She is pleased, she
allows, but still a bit perplexed. “I think the college has more to do
with this than I,” she insists.
Her only disappointment in the whole affair was that DoUy
Parton, a Medal of Arts winner, was not able to attend. “I am a great
admirer,” says Miss Brann.
Seeing the White House, chatting with Robert Duval about his
films, and hearing accolades for his college also made the event
memorable for President Nelson, who had never been to the White
House before. He found it remarkable that the President knew
several former and current St. John’s students. One especially
enjoyable moment for Mr. Nelson was walking up to President Bush
in the receiving line and hearing the greeting, “and here’s the
other president.”
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
—Rosemary Harty
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
Fite Club
Tuesday-Nite Fites Allow Johnnies to Take the Gloves Off
BY Chris Utter { Ao6)
One of the most idiosyn
cratic parts of life on the
Annapolis campus in
recent years has been the
proliferation of clubs
with names like “Mabel
the Swimming Wonder
Monkey,” which meets to
watch and comment on
campy movies, and “Hoi
Strategoi,” organized
with the sole purpose of
playing the board game
“Diplomacy.” One of
these odd clubs, though,
the “Tuesday Nite
Fites,” has outstripped
them all in popularity.
On a good night, more
than 40 students partici- S
pate in the “fite,” a kind »
of sophistry contest.
It all began two years
ago with a series of
lectures given by Annapolis tutor Michael Comenetz. Comenetz
sent out a note to the Polity that ended with the statement, “there
will be some etymology and prostitution.” Erikk Geannikis (A06)
thought this was such a strange juxtaposition of subjects that he
wrote the two words on a chalkboard in the King William Room of
the Barr Buchanan Center. Throughout the day students drifted in
and out of the room, some deciding to vote on which concept was
superior by putting a mark under one of them. Geannikis saw this
and thought it was so funny that he decided to pit two new
concepts,''Puliteia vs. Caramella,” against each other, for people
to debate about and then vote on. Shortly thereafter Geannikis
institutionalized the process by securing a charter for the club
from the student council.
The kind of debate that goes on at a fite is, in part, something
we are used to at St. John’s. It is an exercise in comparing two
concepts in the abstract, even though we may not have related the
two ideas before. “That’s the benefit of Tuesday Nite Fites,” says
Brian Jones (Ao6)-gaining a clear idea of concepts we use every
day.” But the TNF format gives students the chance to indulge in
something we can’t do in seminar: debate, compete, and argue.
“It’s a kind of catharsis,” says Jones. “I think that’s why so many
students show up.”
Nevertheless, as in seminar, the merit of an argument depends
on its ability to get to the heart of the matter. “It’s not a candy
shop,” says Schuyler Sturm (A08), quoting one of the club’s
mottos. In other words, the outcome does not depend on which
concept people like more, but which one is demonstrated to be
superior. For example, in the debate “Pants vs. Dance,” at first the
debaters were at a loss even to compare the ideas, let alone decide
{The College
Beyond Sophistry: The
TOPICS MAY BE BIZARRE,
BUT THESE JOHNNIES TAKE
DEBATE SERIOUSLY. LeFT TO
RIGHT ARE AnNAPOLIS
STUDENTS Max Kronberg,
Meghan Lockard, Brian
Jones, Genna Hinkle,
AND Christopher Stuart.
which one was better.
Diagrams of pants were
drawn on the chalkboard,
and liters vehemently
tried to persuade the
other side that they were
right. Eventually,
though, the thought
struck someone that
“pants” could also be the
plural for “pant,” as in
panting for breath.
And since “pants,” as
breaths, are necessary in order to “dance,” pants ended up
winning because of its priority. Often, if something can be shown
to be a priori, that concept will win the fite.
There is always a “Title Fite,” which is the main fight of the
evening, and which is usually a little more serious, for example,
“Ways vs. Curves”; this is followed by the “Two Hole,” which
some have called “earthier” than the rest; the “Brian Jones Fite,”
and the “Seminar Fite,” which pits two, usually senior, seminar
topics against each other. At the end of the nite, each fiter votes
for a winner. A memorable recent Title Fite was “Furniture vs.
Friction.” Most people sided with friction following the priority
argument. But then one of the combatants, struck by the blindness
of his peers, walked up to the blackboard and wrote, “Friction: too
subtle to be serious?” And after a fierce debate, furniture won. ‘‘It
won,” says Sturm, “because superiority is based on a stronger
concept, what affects the human mind more. For this reason, I
often discourage people from using the priority argument. Many
of the debates can be reduced simply to Nature vs. Art.”
Geannikis is graduating this year, but he has passed on the
archonship of the Tuesday Nite Fites to Sturm. Sturm was the only
freshman to show up for the first fite of his freshman year. Sturm
sees a bright future for TNF, which he views as more than just a
weekly sophistry contest.
“It’s useful as exercise for seminar in that we can think of
concepts purely in the abstract. I don’t know that this could exist
at another school; it would probably seem strange to outsiders.
But people here are used to strange oppositions between
subjects,” he says.
- St John’s College •
Winter 2006 }
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Fish on the Run
Students read by it. Faculty
fiddle by it. Children peer over
its edge. With the exception of
the bell tower of Weigle Hall, no
physical feature is more
emblematic of the Santa Fe
campus than the fishpond on
the Upper Placita, in front of
Peterson Student Center.
The pond and surrounding
garden were gifts from film
actress Greer Garson, who
donated funds for the project in
1964 in memory of her mother,
Nina S. Garson. Garson’s
husband. Buddy Fogelson, was a
member of the Board of Visitors
and Governors, and the two
were supporters of the college.
Designed as a two-foot deep
reflecting pool, the pond was
not originally intended to
accommodate fish, says Pat
McCue (SFGI83, EC97), land
scape and grounds supervisor.
It’s not quite deep enough for
healthy and happy fish, but that
didn’t stop local residents from
releasing overgrown goldfish
into the pool. It quickly became
a refuge for Santa Fe’s rejected
fish. (Several “legitimate” koi,
an ornamental variety of the
common carp, were donated by
former president John Balkcom,
SFGIoo.)
Later this spring, the
fishpond and its residents will
benefit from a much-needed
renovation project. The pool
will be made deeper, the water
fall will be repaired, and a water
line that runs beneath the pond
will be replaced. During
construction, he says, all of the
fish except the koi will be up for
adoption. Fish that are not
adopted will be distributed to
the pond in Schepp’s Garden, to
the president’s home, and to a
fish tank.
Most of the pond’s fish are
goldfish; a few catfish and
minnows have also taken up
residence with the elegant koi,
and every once in a while some
Johnnies on the Water
Annapolis Athletic Director
Leo Pickens (A78) has been
seeing more and more students
turning out for crew and
sailing. An analytical sort, he
crunched some numbers.
“With 61 students involved-45
in crew, 16 in sailing-that’s 13
percent of the St. John’s under
graduate students spending
time in boats on the water,”
he says.
Also a competitive sort,
Pickens did some comparing:
Washington College, on the
Chestertown River, and St.
Mary’s College, a sailing
powerhouse regularly atop the
collegiate rankings, each have
just 7 percent of their student
bodies involved in boat racing
sports. “Then I thought, ‘what
about the Naval Academy?
They have all those boats,’”
Pickens says.
The academy has just 9
percent of its midshipmen in
thing exotic-a rainbow trout,
for example-turns up. When he
has time, McCue feeds the fish,
though they could easily survive
on the pond’s algae and larvae.
For the most part, pond
maintenance is minimal, that is
until McCue has to repot all 18
of the water lilies. Among the
fish pond flora there is one
special variety, a lotus flower
symbolic of Eastern philosophy
that McCue donated in honor of
the Eastern Classics program.
Johnnies seem to develop a
special affection for the
crew or sailing. That’s 360
individuals, Pickens allows, but
percentage-wise, St. John’s wins.
In part, the new interest in
sailing is due to a fleet with
nine good boats. The program
also has a dedicated coach in
Buildings and Grounds
Supervisor Pat McCue sits on
THE EROZEN FISH POND, DUE FOR A
MAJOR OVERHAUL THIS SPRING.
ichthyoid residents of the pond.
Several years ago, “Stan,” a very
large koi, ruled the pond for
four years. When Stan died,
some students paid to have him
stuffed and mounted in the
dining hall, where he hung for a
few years until he mysteriously
disappeared.
—Andra Maguran
Skip Kovacs, also the college’s
boathouse manager, “a world
class sailor,” Pickens says.
“Sailboat racing is just plain
fun,” Pickens says. “They prac
tice as a team on Tuesdays and
Fridays, and on Wednesdays,
members are invited to go and
scrimmage with Navy.”
This spring, the team will
take part in a competition
hosted by the Mid-Atlantic
Intercollegiate Sailing
Association. “We’re taking
advantage of the great natural
resource of the Chesapeake
Bay, to get students out and
involved in water sports. It’s a
great fit for us-not like foot
ball,” says Pickens.
Johnnies churn up the Severn
River during crew practice
LAST FALL.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
News and Announcements
Award for President Nelson
Last November, the Rosenbach
Museum & Library of Philadel
phia honored Annapolis
President Christopher B.
Nelson for “his passion for liter
ature and teaching.” The award
was presented at the museum’s
annual fund-raising event.
One of the cultural treasures
of Philadelphia, the Rosenbach
seeks to inspire curiosity,
inquiry, and creativity through
its exhibitions and programs.
A quick review of the museum’s
collections indicates why the
Rosenbach’s board of directors
would appreciate President
Nelson and St. John’s College.
Among the museum’s collec
tions are the finest known copy
of the first edition oiDon
Quixote, original drawings
and books by William Blake,
manuscripts by Joseph Conrad,
and a manuscript of James
Joyce’s Ulysses.
and Santa Fe community
together. Eakes is currently
principal of The Holly
Company, a consulting firm.
The society sponsors special
seminars, called Inviting
Conversations, which are
modeled after 18th-century
salon conversations, are led by a
St. John’s College tutor, and
take place in the home of a
Philos member.
The society’s newest
initiative, the Xenos Program,
seeks to involve St. John’s
students in their community by
arranging informal gatherings
at the homes of local residents,
who provide students with
career advice, local networking
contacts, or just a homecooked meal.
Off-Broadway Hit
New Tutors
Gabriel Pihas (A93) joined the
Annapolis faculty in January.
After graduating from
St. John’s, Pihas went on to earn
an M.A. and M. Phil in Medieval
Studies at Yale University. He
studied at the Committee on
Social Thought at the University
of Chicago, where he earned
master’s and doctoral degrees in
Social Thought. His academic
honors include an Evelyn S. Nef
Fellowship, the Marian and
Andrew Heiskell Pre-Doctoral
Rome Prize, and a Dissertation
Teaching and Research Fellow
ship at Chicago.
SF Chooses Philos Society
Chairman
Thomas G. Eakes, a busi
nessman and civic leader in
Santa Fe, has been elected to
serve as chairman of the Philos
Society, a steering group of
St. John’s College supporters
that works to bring the college
Santa Fe
sophomore
Laura Sook made
her directorial debut with
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, produced last
FALL BY Santa Fe students. It was met with critical acclaim from
both the campus community and locals who turned out for an
EVENING of musical THEATER FEATURING “MISTAKEN IDENTITIES,
PIRATES, AND OF COURSE, A LOVE STORY,” SoOK SAYS. FrOM LEFT TO
RIGHT, THE THESPIANS ARE: SOPHOMORES AbBY PetRY AND E. ElNOWSKI,
AND SENIOR Jeanne Bustamante.
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
Search & Rescue Honors
Volunteer
Winter usually sends the
St. John’s College Search and
Rescue out into the snow,
looking for lost skiers. But this
past November, the team found
one of their own to honor, dedi
cating the team’s emergency
operations center to Dr. Jerry
Allen in honor of his years of
service. AUen, a Santa Fe family
practice physician, joined the
team in 1973.
About 40 current and former
team members came together
to honor Allen. During the
ceremony, the center-located in
the basement of the Evans
Science Laboratory-was
officially renamed the Jerry
Allen Emergency Operations
Center, with a bronze plaque
installed. The center is the
team’s command post, where
radios are tuned to state police
and civil air patrol frequencies
and mission boards track teams
in the field.
In his remarks, Allen
shrugged off the attention. “I
would have to say that for all the
years I was on this team, I got
far more from the team than the
team got from me,” he said.
Team President Mike
Ongstad (SF06) recounted his
first meeting with Allen. “I
showed up for my first mission
with my pack full of gear. It was
about a a.m. And here was this
old guy who was going to lead
our team into the wilderness,
and I thought, ‘oh great, this is
going to be so slow.’ After the
first hour on the trail the
students had to ask him to slow
down so we could catch up,”
said Ongstad.
Team founder Herb Kincey
said that over the past 3a years,
Allen invested “tremendous”
effort into the volunteer organi
zation. “He’s worked with
generations of St. John’s
students and has always been
there for them,” he added. 4—John Haktnett
(SF83)
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Johnnies Help in New Orleans
A few hours after their last
seminar in December, five
Annapolis Johnnies piled into a
car and headed south to New
Orleans to work in the city’s
devastated Ninth Ward. They
had volunteered for a group
called Common Ground, a New
York-based nonprofit housing
and community development
organization. Caleb Nolen (Ao8)
had been looking for a way to
help, and his Web search led him
to the group.
Nolen and Jessie Seiler (Ao8)
organized the trip, which also
included Joshua Becker (Ao8),
Micah Gates (Aog), and Rebecca
Harrison (Aog). Some of the
students stayed for the whole
winter break, sacrificing hoUday
celebrations with their families
to go to New Orleans. The
students spent their nights
sleeping on cots in the commu
nity center of a church and their
days gutting homes that were
badly damaged by flooding and
rendered uninhabitable by mold.
The experience was unsetthng,
the work was exhausting and
even dangerous, and at times,
the students felt overcome by a
tragedy of such proportion.
“The night we drove in, we saw
these mountains of trash piled
everywhere,” Seiler says. “It was
eerie, apocalyptic.”
At the same time, the
dedicated volunteers the
students encountered, especially
those working for Common
Ground, gave them some hope
for the city. “There are a lot of
really good people doing really
good things,” Nolen said.
Each person in the group was
assigned work suited to his or
her skills. Gates did technical
work; Becker worked in the
kitchen feeding volunteers.
Nolen, Seiler, and Harrison
gutted flood-damaged homes in
the lower Ninth Ward.
As they worked in damaged
homes, the students wore
respirators and suits to protect
them from mold and asbestos.
''The night we drove in, we saw these
mountairts oftrashpiled everywhere.
It was eerie, apocalyptie. ”
Jessie Seiler (Ao8)
Back to Nature
Annapolis campus Johnnies
have long used College Creek as
a source of recreation. Today’s
Johnnies also use it as a source
of study, ever since a iggg
project turned a portion of the
shoreline back to its original
marsh. Now, a $200,000 chal
lenge grant from the Arthur
Vining Davis Foundations will
help return the entire shoreline
to marsh.
College Creek, a Chesapeake
Bay tidal tributary, has for a
long time been considered a
prime candidate for shoreline
restoration. Stabihzing the
shoreline will create natural
filters for stormwater runoff
Using sledgehammers and
crowbars, they gutted the walls
of homes right down to the twoby-fours, tearing out insulation,
paneling, ceilings, and drywall.
Both Seiler and Nolen got very
sick, and Seiler had to move to
another assignment: assisting
the Common Ground legal
team. One project she worked on
included trying to get FEMA
trailers to the city’s homeless.
Thousands of the trailers sat
unoccupied while political and
practical obstacles kept them
from being used.
In addition to the stench of
rotting refuse, the acrid smell of
bleach-used to eradicate mold
and to disinfect tools, boots, and
protective clothing-wiU stay
with the volunteers for a long
time. So will the things they
threw out: a notebook in which
someone had copied half of the
and keep nutrients from the
creek, creating healthy habitats
for vegetation and wildlife.
The iggg restoration
returned approximately onefifth (170 linear feet) of the
shoreline to marsh. The marsh
has been used as a laboratory
field site and has been inte
grated into the laboratory
curriculum. It also provides
opportunities for independent
student and faculty study.
Annapolis tutor Nicholas
Maistrellis describes some of
the work done with the marsh:
“We collect and identify estu
arine organisms, particularly
fish, and marine invertebrates.
{The College.
We identify the plants indige
nous to the marsh and think
about their distributions over
the marsh. This allows us to
raise the question of whether
the plants are restricted prima
rily by physical factors or by
competition with others. This,
in turn, leads to the study of the
changing distribution patterns
of different types of Spartina
alterniflora. The latter problem,
whose study requires the use of
molecular biological tech
niques, has so far been done
only by students working inde
pendently. However, I would
hke to see it included in the
senior lab curriculum.”
St. John’s is now in the plan
ning stages to remove the
remaining 680 feet of structural
John’s College • Winter 2006 }
7
psalms from the Bible, a man’s
photo album with pictures of his
daughter, all of a child’s doUs
and other toys.
Walking through the city,
Nolen and another volunteer
marveled at surreal scenes such
as an abandoned March Gras
float and homes spray-painted
with bright red numbers indi
cating how many dead were
found inside. They spotted a
dead dog that had been rotting
on the street for several months.
To Nolen, it seemed hke a small
but important thing to do
something about that dog.
“Jessie and I went back the
next day and put it in a plastic
garbage bag,” says Nolen. “I was
afraid it was going to fall apart
when we picked it up.”
“That was a long day,” Seiler
adds.
Nolen is taking the spring
semester off to continue working
in the lower Ninth. It would be
difficult for him to study right
now. “Here is a chance to do
some good,” he says.
Seiler plans to go back over
spring break and hopes to spend
next summer volunteering in the
city. She is certain there will still
be plenty of work to do.
—Rosemary Harty
bulkhead and restore this area
to its natural wetland and shrub
buffer. Current funders, in addi
tion to the Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations, include the Vernal
W. and Florence H. Bates Foun
dation and the Chesapeake Bay
Trust.
Maistrellis fists the ways the
fully restored marsh will benefit
St. John’s: “As an outdoor site
for scientific investigation of
living things; as a resource that
can be shared with the larger
Annapolis community; as a way
to decrease the amount of sedi
ment entering the creek. This
improves water quality, and
thus the fruitfulness of the
creek in fife forms.” And, he
says, “it is beautiful.”
—SUS3AN Borden (A87)
�{Letters}
World Government
World Federalism was indeed
an interesting movement, but
what if the world government
turns out to be a tyranny? This
would seem to be an obvious
possibility, but Mr. Baratta
[author of The Politics of World
Federation, reviewed in the
Fall 2005 College} and other
proponents of “global
governance” hardly ever seem
to consider it. Today we have,
so to speak, a free market in
governments: if you don’t like
the government you live under,
you can move somewhere else.
True, the price is high, and
some people are unable or
unwilling to pay it, but many
do. Under a world government,
there would be no escape.
Moreover, the hope that the
world government would be a
federal system and therefore
would not meddle in the
internal affairs of its member
states is a feeble one.
In the United States, we
have a “federal” government
that has in effect become a
monolithic national govern
ment, spends more money
every year, and is never reined
in by the states that created it.
A world government, alas,
would do the same.
Geoffrey Rommel,
SF81
Mr. Sarkissian’s Stories
It was with great sadness that I
learned of John Sarkissian’s
death from a recent issue of
The College. John was both a
legend and a good friend to our
generation of students at the
college. He could discuss
Darwin or Leadbelly with
equal facility, as could the
other members (Barbara
Leonard, HA86, Bob Spaeth,
Nick Maistrellis and a few
wannabees) of what we
then called “The Biology
Department.”
What truly set John apart
was his ability to convey the
reassuring thought that life
existed beyond four years of
intense reading and discussion
in the sometimes claustro
phobic Town and Gown
atmosphere in 1960s
Annapolis. John was an
endless source of information
on travel and suggestions for
books that while maybe not
“great” were certainly very,
very good. In the days before
formal graduate school
counseling was available, he
also served as a savvy guide to
what these schools had to offer
and how to put together a
successful application. A lot of
this knowledge was built up
through his ongoing contact
with alumni, and it never failed
to impress me that when
former students returned for a
visit, John was usually the first
tutor they sought out.
But it was the stories, both
those he told and those told
about him that really were a
source of endless enjoyment
and such a gift to us; I can
honestly say that I never heard
him tell the same story twice.
There was the one about the
five jockeys who jumped into
his cab in Chicago, and who
insisted on climbing back and
forth between front seat and
back as they loudly demanded
to be taken “where they could
have a good time.”
And there was his fellow
tutor who wheeled a typewriter
rather than his newborn
around Annapolis in a pram.
Or there was the time, while
serving as a radioman on a
World War II PT boat in the
Pacific (“because I knew how
to use a Japanese dictionary”),
when a torpedo was shot
through the wooden hull of the
ancient craft. The inevitable
Sarkissian punch line was that
the water was so shallow that
they only sank a few feet and
were soon rescued.. .
My favorite was the tale of
Boa Vista. .. John and
colleagues had been traveling
up the Amazon for days
looking for this legendary
beauty of a town with paved
{The College
streets and running water.
“ ‘Beautiful Sight’ my foot,” he
snorted, “nothing but dirt
roads, scrawny chickens, and
flies. But wait, wait,” this last
delivered with leaping
eyebrows and an ash now
longer than its cigarette, “a
Chinese restaurant with the
best Peking Duck I’ve ever
had, no, seriously, better than
in Beijing.”
John and I met up
occasionally, but far too
infrequently, over the past
35 years. One evening at the
old Salaam Supper Club in
D.C. stands out, John in a fez,
banging on some borrowed
bongo drums in time to the
combo’s accompaniment of the
belly dancer. . .
I last saw John a few years
back at an alumni reunion.
He was leading a seminar on
Coriolanus. .. It was one of
those crisp, timeless, October
afternoons when nostalgia is
invigorating and old friends
are new joys. .. We exchanged
reading suggestions. I think at
the time he was devouring
John Buchan’s work or George
MacDonald Frazier’s Flashman
series, or something by
Graham Greene, or, who
knows, maybe all three at once.
I don’t remember what I was
reading but I had been trav
eling overseas and tried to
muster up one or two pale
imitations of a Sarkissian-level
adventure to share with him.
John was one of the most
approachable and delightful
people I have ever known. I
will miss his stories and tips for
good reading, but what I will
miss even more is always
looking forward to hearing
them in person.
Juan B. Ianni,
A70
Euclid with Mr. Swentzell
I haven’t had a lot of contact
with St. John’s in these nearly
20 years since I graduated. But
I have lots of fond memories,
and I know that St. John’s
- St John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
contributes to my sense of
coming from somewhere in
spite of having moved around a
lot in my life.
When I tell people about
St. John’s, I always mention
the books. But of course, it
isn’t really, or mainly even, the
books. It is the conversations
and the relationships they
engendered. Upon hearing the
sad and surprising news of the
death of Ralph Swentzell, what
is brought home to me, in my
sadness, is not the immortality
of books, but us mortals and
the relationships we share.
It was a joy to study Euclid and
be in seminar with Ralph
Swentzell.
I hadn’t spoken to
Mr. Swentzell in all these
years, but I sure carried a
sense of wonder and admira
tion for him. He loved so much
but never played favorites. He
was a big man with a big voice
and a grand enthusiasm.
I am not sure whom to thank
for the gift of Ralph Swentzell,
but for anyone listening, let it
be known that it is one I
cherish.
Liz Barnet,
SF86
The CoZZege welcomes letters
on issues of interest to readers.
Letters may be 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 The College
magazine. Public Relations
Office, St. John’s College,
rr6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
Letters can also be sent via
e-mail to: rosemary.harty@
sjca.edu.
�{History}
9
The St. John’s Trombone Blues
BY Gil Crandall, class of 1936
It has been 73 years since I
enrolled at St. John’s. That
previous June I had graduated
from Annapolis High School and
turned 17 a month later. Like
most teenagers, I was filled with
confidence. Yet I felt a bit intimi
dated as I walked up to
McDowell Hall knowing that I
was just a “Rat,” a holdover
term for freshman from the era
when St. John’s had a military
program.
Being an Annapolis native,
I was a day student, but never
theless subject to the same
“Rat rules” as other freshmen.
We were required to wear rinkydink black-peaked caps, with the
number 36 in orange on the
front, ill-fitting cover that had a
tendency to fall off easily. (I still
have mine, but it is a bit motheaten.) There were other Rat
rules enforced by the student
council, and transgressions
resulted in various punish
ments, including corporal, but
nothing really harmful except to
one’s ego.
It had been my intention to
participate in some extracurric
ular activities. However, I had a
part-time job at Gilbert’s Pharmacy and Soda Fountain on State
Circle, a business owned by my family. I also played the guitar, an
instrument slowly gaining popularity in dance bands. The Swing
era was just then on the rise.
One day, not long after the semester started, I received a
circular advising that the college marching band would welcome
new members. I filled in the accompanying application answering
the question, “What instrument would you like to play?” with
“trombone.” Guitar was not then a marching band instrument,
and to my knowledge, it still isn’t. The director of the college
musical activities was Professor Adolph Trovosky, a longtime
Annapolitan who had emigrated years earlier from Poland or
Germany and had never shed a thick accent. He was regarded as a
fine musician and a kind man with a cheerful disposition.
On the first day of band practice the good professor must have
been somewhat agitated, as he busily distributed instruments and
scores. He handed me a nickel-plated trombone and several
musical scores. Never before had I ever touched a trombone and I
could not read a note of the music. When the time came for the
band to play the first selection, “St. John’s Forever,” I simply sat
with the trombone on my lap.
Professor Trovosky, observing that I was not participating,
stopped the band and asked me why I was not playing. Somewhat
Gil Crandall in 1936; a gig with
OTHER Johnnies helped him buy a
NEW GUITAR.
embarrassed I responded, “Sir, I
can’t play trombone.” With a
look of total astonishment, he
said, “Veil, Mr. Grandall, vy in de
vorld dit you zign up to play der
trombone?” I meekly responded,
“Sir on the application form I
answered the
question, ‘What instrument
would you like to play?’ I would
like to play trombone.’ ”
Visibly confounded. Professor
Trovosky glared at me while the
band members roared with
laughter. Placing the trombone
and sheet music on the gym
bench, I quickly departed as the
band resumed playing.
Fortunately that experience
did not adversely affect my
college career, nor my inauspi
cious future as a guitarist.
The college did not sponsor a
dance band, so I formed a small
off-campus combo dubbed “The
Collegians.” The roster included
myself, two local musicians, and
three other Johnnies: highly
talented Bill Quimby on sax, clar
inet, and flute; robust Bob Murphy on stringbass (both of the class
of 1936); and Bill Herson, class 011935, a mad-man drummer.
The Collegians, sans trombone, gained popularity in the
Annapolis area, playing gigs at various venues with slim financial
reward. The country was enduring the Great Depression. Our
biggest success came when an RKO movie team arrived in
Annapolis to shoot a scene for Shipmates Forever, featuring Dick
Powell and Ruby Keeler. The storyline centered on the Naval
Academy, with Powell as a midshipman and Ruby his sweetheart.
I was lucky to book the Collegians and a few extra musicians to
play “sideline music” for a scene replicating the academy’s
Graduation Ball, shot in Dahlgren Hall. All the band had to do was
to play a few bars of a foxtrot as 50 couples, attired in formal dress,
started dancing. The camera rolled, a dialogue between the two
stars was recorded, and we stopped playing on the director’s cue.
Later in Hollywood, the studio orchestra provided the real music.
That gig was a financial windfall for the Collegians. It paid for
my then-costly ($184.50) Epiphone guitar, with enough left over
to buy a six-dollar derby hat de rigueur for hip musicians.
Professor Trovosky now plays a heavenly harp, as do all the
Collegians, except for me. I strum guitar rather poorly and still
yearn to play the trombone,
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Inauguration}
“SOMETHING
EXTRAORDINARY
HAPPENS HERE”
Santa Fe Welcomes a President
ore than 700 students, alumni, and friends of
St. John’s College filled the gymnasium of the
Student Activities Center for the October 28
Inauguration ceremony for Michael Peters, the
sixth turned
president
the into
Santaa Fe
campus.
Creative decorating
theofgym
venue
fitting for an
occasion of such importance, with faculty in academic robes
joining military officers (friends and former colleagues of Mr.
Peters, a West Point graduate and retired Army colonel) in their
dress uniforms. With music performed by faculty and students,
the ceremony was short on pomp and rich with substance
reflecting the nature of the individual chosen to lead the college.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson set the tone for the evening
with his enthusiastic pledge to support St. John’s College. In a
state where “tradition rests right next to high-paced modernity,”
the governor said, “... it is only fitting that such a place is also
home to a unique institution of higher learning like St. John’s.”
Gov. Richardson expressed admiration for St. John’s College
and particular admiration for Mr. Peters, a retired Army officer
who served in the Vietnam War, former chief of staff at West
Point, and most recently, executive vice president of the Council
on Foreign Relations. Mr. Peters, he said, is a “forward-looking,
visionary. . . committed to developing and strengthening the
bonds that make St. John’s such a special place.”
“Mike Peters is a man who has served his state, his country, and
his community with honor and courage-from soldier, to
diplomat, to statesman. And he has spent the better part of his
career working with young people as an educator-helping to
bring positive influence to the next generation of soldiers,
scholars, innovators, and leaders.”
M
In just a short few months, the governor said, Mr. Peters has
come to know “the unique nature of New Mexico, as well as the
critical importance of higher education here in this state.” As a
college that prepares students to take their place in “an increas
ingly dynamic world,” St. John’s is important to the future of New
Mexico. And under Mr. Peter’s leadership, Gov. Richardson
predicted, the college will thrive.
“The intellectual heft, the diplomatic savvy, and the disci
plined personality he brings to the table will only lead to bigger
and better things for both St. John’s College and New Mexico,”
Gov. Richardson said. “His thirst for learning and his appetite for
aiming higher is contagious-and sure to help motivate and
inspire the students, the faculty, and the family of St. John’s
College to do great things, well into the future.”
Santa Fe Dean David Levine recalled the beginning of the New
Program in Annapolis in 1937 as he considered the future of
St. John’s with Mr. Peters at the helm. The St. John’s Program was
founded at a time when the world was in crisis, he said, when “we
were all to be tested, not only our physical strength, but our moral
fiber.”
A second beginning came in 1964 with the founding of a second
campus, when “a great experiment was undertaken, to see
whether the same college, the same living curriculum, could exist
in two different places.” Today, though “the look and esprit are
quite different” at the two campuses, “what is not different is the
generous spirit of learning, the openness, originality, profundity,
and common purpose.”
Formally installing Mr. Peters as the president of St. John’s
Santa Fe campus another new beginning, one of great promise.
Dean Levine said. The college took on an extended national
{The College- St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Inauguration}
u
Passing the torch: President Michael Peters
AND Former Santa Fe President John Balkcom
(SFGIoo).
made a point of thanking his family for their
support and encouragement: his wife, Eleanor,
and their children, Mike and Rebecca; and his
parents. Max and Peg Peters, “who have been
my models since I was a child.” He also
thanked Moravian College President Ervin
Rokke, a mentor and friend, and the person
who encouraged him to consider life as a
college president-to the good fortune of
St. John’s College.
Inauguration Address
BY Michael Peters
search for a president and “along came a tall, unassuming, articu
late, generous man of the world, who, too, recognized that some
thing extraordinary happens here.”
“And so it is that today we now call Michael Peters to this great
venture of liberal education as its guardian and spokes-man,” he
continued. “We welcome him to our midst and ask him to join us
in our effort to find a place in our complex world for such a bold
vision of education, at once enabling, encouraging, and
ennobling.”
Speaking for the students, senior Shane Gassaway, Polity presi
dent, admired the way Mr. Peters has devoted time to getting to
know students and the Program by taking part in an international
affairs study group, attending dormitory meetings, and becoming
a genuine advocate for students.
“But if there were only one way to win the heart of a Johnnie it
would be to read the books that we read with the same care and
reverence that we show them,” noted Mr. Gassaway. “And this
Mr. Peters has undertaken to accomplish. Beginning with the
January Freshmen last winter, Mr. Peters has attended seminar
every Monday and Thursday night. And now he does the same
with the sophomore class.. . We’ve known him so far as a prospy,
as a January freshman, and now as a sophomore. It is sometimes
said of the January freshmen that those who don’t leave right away
turn out to be the best Johnnies. With such a valuable addition to
our community. I’m hopeful we can say the same thing about
January presidents some day.”
Acknowledging each of the guests and speakers at the cere
mony, particularly students and alumni of the college, Mr. Peters
Eighteen months ago, as I was comfortably
ensconced at the Council on Foreign Relations
in New York, I could not have imagined that I
would be at the podium in the St. John’s College
Student Activities Center in Santa Fe addressing
you as the president. But as a reformed New Yorker, I recall the
insight of that renowned contemporary Western philosopher,
someone who is not included in our curriculum: Yogi Berra. Yogi
is purported to have said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially
about the future.” I can certainly attest to the wisdom of Yogi’s
remark. However, when I walked into a classroom on the
Annapolis campus in July last year and observed the engagement
and commitment of the students and faculty to our distinctive
program, I knew this was the place for me. Everything that has
happened since then-a quick trip to interview in Santa Fe while
trying to adjust to mountain time and 7,000 feet; a mid-winter
move; and getting to know the incredible students, faculty, staff,
alumni and friends of the college-have reinforced my first impres
sion and love for the college.
St. John’s is a community of learners centered on what we call
“the Program,” an all-required curriculum in math, science,
language, social science and philosophy based on study of the
great works in Western thought. This community is enhanced by
our Graduate Institute, which offers two master’s programs,
including one in Eastern Glassies, where students study the key
texts in the Chinese, Japanese, and Indian traditions.
As I said, the students and faculty are a very talented group who
share a commitment to the Program. At St. John’s we don’t put
much credence in reviews and rankings like those of U.S. News
and World Report, but there is one I’d like to share with you that
speaks to the excellence of our faculty and their dedication to
teaching: The Princeton Review. In the most recent edition, the
{The College- St. John ’5 College • Winter 2006 }
�12.
{Inauguration}
liberal education is ourpurpose.
A purpose that is important in and of
itself but abo important four
Republic b to be up to the challenpps
improve our classrooms, create a
it willface in the years ahead.
home for the Graduate Institute,
Santa Fe faculty was rated number
one in the country. What is most
and build a modern auditorium
gratifying about this ranking is
President Michael Peters
that would benefit both the
that it is based not on abstract,
campus and the community.
external criteria but on the opin
Second, connection with the community. St. John’s is a vital
ions of the students themselves. My congratulations and thanks to
part of Santa Fe and New Mexico. Each year we bring more than
the faculty for their great work.
loo of the best students from around the United States and the
The central idea behind the St. John’s program is to help all of usworld to New Mexico. Many of these students remain in the state
students and faculty-learn not what to think, but how to think and
after they leave St. John’s and contribute to New Mexico’s
think deeply. In other words, we are seeking a truly liberal educa
tion. Why are we so single-mindedly dedicated to studying the
economy and welfare.
Of our 8,000 alumni, almost i,ooo are residents of New
hberal arts? In part because, as Vartan Gregorian, the president
Mexico, and of this number more than 30 percent are involved in
of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and former president of
education. Also, more than 50 New Mexico teachers and adminis
Brown University, said, “. . . When people do not know how to
trators have attended our Graduate Institute in the past four
question deeply, to separate fact from fiction, and to give coherence
and meaning to hfe, they can feel a[n] . . . unsettling emptiness in
years, and with programs like Tecolote, we have hosted hundreds
their lives.”
more New Mexico educators on campus.
Through our lectures, art exhibits, musical performances,
With this clear sense of who we are and what we are about, allow
community seminars, and summer programs we bring the
me to highlight the three areas I will focus on in the days ahead.
community to St. John’s and the St. John’s experience “off the
They are: support for learning, connection with the community,
hill.” In addition, our students and staff volunteer their time to a
and heightened visibility.
number of deserving enterprises in Santa Fe.
First, support for learning. With fundamentals as solid as ours,
But we want to do more, and we’ll be looking for ways to
my foremost priority is, as one of my predecessors put it, “to facil
strengthen the connections between St. John’s and our friends
itate the work of the faculty . . . [and] ... to create appropriate
and neighbors in Santa Fe and New Mexico. Part of this effort is a
conditions for learning.” I’m not going to list every aspect this
greater emphasis on attracting qualified New Mexico students to
might entail, but it includes continuing to attract and retain the
highest-quality students, faculty and staff; to provide the need
the college, especially those from traditionally underrepresented
based financial aid necessary to support deserving students; to
groups. Our Opportunity Initiative is designed specifically to
address this issue. We are also hopeful that with the Governor’s
ensure a vibrant campus life, where students can exercise and
develop their mind, body, and spirit. And, of course, it also entails
strong support we can convince the legislature to extend the lottery
scholarships to New
building and main
Mexico residents who
taining first-class facili
attend private colleges in
ties and grounds. In this
the state, hke St. John’s.
regard, I apologize that
My final priority is to
you may have to navigate
heighten the visibility of
around some construc
tion on your way to the
the college and the
reception at the Peterson
campus. For too long we
Student Center. This is a
have been content, as
sign of progress for me.
the New Testament says.
We are also in the
initial planning stages
for a new dorm, so we can
house
a
larger
Mr. Peters thanked
MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY
percentage of our under
FORTHEIR SUPPORT (LEFT
graduates on campus,
TO right): his wife,
and we are looking for
Evelyn; son, Mike;
ways to expand and
DAUGHTER, ReBECCA;
AND FATHER, MaX.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Inauguration}
to “keep our light under a bushel basket.” We cannot continue to
do so. Prospective students, friends, the higher education
community-and if it is not too presumptuous, the nation-need to
know about us. Who we are, what we do and how we do it. In part
nership with our sister campus in Annapolis, we need to tell our
story and to be what some have called “a beacon of liberal educa
tion.” Once again to quote Vartan Gregorian, “[HJigher educa
tion . . . must focus on a revival of the liberal arts. Yet, paradoxi
cally, liberal education is in decline just when we need it most....
Liberal education is needed to integrate learning and provide
balance-otherwise students will graduate into a world in which
dependence on experts of every kind will be even more common
than it is today.”
A liberal education is our purpose. A purpose that is important
in and of itself, but also important if our Republic is to be up
to the challenges it will face in the years ahead. For example, as
David Brooks of The New York Times said regarding reform of the
intelligence community, “I’ll believe the intelligence community
has really changed when I see analysts being sent to training
academies where they study Thucydides [and] Tolstoy ... to get a
broad understanding of the full range of human behavior.” Well,
at St. John’s we do study Thucydides and Tolstoy. Not because we
are trying to develop intelligence analysts, but because we believe
that a responsible citizen needs a number of attributes that come
from a liberal education including a “broad understanding of
human behavior.”
To tell the St. John’s story we need the help of everyone herealumni, parents, friends, students, faculty and staff. It deserves to
13
be told-I’m certainly going to do it and I hope you will join me.
As I conclude, you’ll forgive me, but sometimes I just can’t get
beyond my old military training. One aspect of that training was in
a presentation, you should always tell’em what you’re going to tell
them, tell them and tell’em what you told them.
So again, my priorities are: First and foremost, support for
learning; second, connection with the community and last, but
certainly not least, heighten visibihty for the college and the campus.
Blessed with a very sohd foundation, a clear sense of who we are
and what we wish to accomphsh, and the
talent and commitment of the entire
college community, I am confident that
St. John’s best days are ahead. I am
pleased to play a part in fulfiUing this very
promising future. Thank you for demon
strating your support for St. John’s by
being with us today,
Above: Gov. Richardson
CONGRATULATES PRESIDENT PeTERS.
Left: The after-Inauguration party at
THE Peterson Student Center was an
all-inclusive and festive affair that
FILLED BOTH THE DiNING HaLL AND THE
Coffee Shop. Tutor Carey Stickney
(A75) JOINED STUDENTS IN PROVIDING THE
Coffee Shop music.
{The College. St. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
�{Johnnies at Work}
LIVES IN THEIR HANDS
Johnnies Workfor Lasting Beauty
wi Caroline Knapp, SF99
Wiener’s character is with his craft. The patience, elegance, and
hese Johnnies make different
deliberation that characterize boatbuilding are just as evident in
things: timher-frame homes,
his words as in the boat frames all around him.
jewelry, wooden boats, furniture.
He came to the work, Wiener explains, “theoretically.” While
he attended St. John’s, Wiener’s developing interest in the
What they share is the desire to
manual arts was encouraged by tutor William Darkey (class of
build something enduring and
194a), who built his own harpsichord. But it wasn’t until gradu
beautiful and to improve in their
ating that Wiener set himself to training his body “in as rigorous a
I had trained my mind at St. John’s.”
craft with each new project they take on.fashion
Theyasare
The desire for rigor led him to boatbuilding. It was, in his way of
idealistic and practical, enterprising and
imagi
thinking, the “most uncompromising” of the woodcrafts, the one
native, and when they finish a day’s work, they
with the lowest margin for error. “Furniture,” he says, “has to
hold up to the demands of the human body, but ships have to hold
have the pleasure of standing back and regarding
up to the full force of nature out on the water.”
the fruits of their labor.
However, learning to build wooden boats in the United States in
T
Michael Wiener,
SF69
Boatbuilder
Carrying on a conversation with Michael Wiener at the Spaulding
Center for Wooden Boats isn’t for the easily discouraged.
Although the boatyard in Sausalito, Calif, is just big enough for
a half dozen wooden boats in various stages of reconstruction, it’s
humming with activity. Two young men are carting planks from
one neat stack to another, an older man in a straw hat is cranking
a hand-operated crane, and from inside the wood-beamed ware
house comes the hiss of welding equipment. In the middle of the
yard a group of adult students peers up at the partially de
constructed hull of a loo-year-old pleasure boat, Freda. The
atmosphere is of steady, unhurried industry. As head of the yard,
Wiener can’t go more than two minutes-even on his lunch hourwithout being called over to consult on one of the dozens of tasks
at hand.
Wiener answers each question with the same measured, precise
attention. Under his soft cloth cap his expression is affable; his
eyes, while alert to the yard’s activity, are relaxed. When he tells
the story of his journey to this boatyard, it’s clear how consonant
the early 1970s was no easy task. After an unsuccessful search for
a boatyard in Maine, Wiener returned for a time to his native San
Francisco Bay. There he found one yard whose boatbuilders were
“taken aback and flattered” that he would request an apprentice
ship in a dying art. But after he’d put in a year learning the
rudiments of the trade, he recalls the yard’s Irish foreman taking
him aside and asking, “Do you know what you’re doing?” When
he answered in the affirmative, the man said, “Well, my lad,
you’re doing it in the wrong place.”
That recommendation sent Wiener on an international hunt for
a traditional boatyard willing to take on an American apprentice
during the height of the Vietnam War. He found it eventually in
Denmark, where he spent four years as an unpaid apprentice,
studying from master boat builders.
When he returned to the United States, Wiener was well
qualified to build wooden boats, but uncertain whether he wanted
to. Instead, hoping to integrate his academic and practical
training, he went to work for Charles and Ray Eames in their
famous San Francisco design office. The Eames brothers,
intrigued by Wiener’s combination of intellectual and hands-on
experience, soon put him to work on one of their most ambitious
projects, the feature-length science movie Powers of Ten. Wiener
{The College- St. John ’5 College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{JohnniesatWork}
Michael Wiener (SF69)
15
sought rigor in his life and
FOUND IT IN BOATBUILDING.
{The College -Sf. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
�{JohnniesatWork}
i6
''Given the choice between moreperfect and
more quick, I always choose moreperfect.
Kait Schott,
designed an innovative camera stand and shot the film, which has
since become something of a cult classic.
Though his work with the Eames brothers brought him closer
to the fusion of knowledge he’d envisioned in Mr. Darkey’s
freshman math class. (“Lining up a 2o-foot animation stand, I
used plenty of Euclid,” he explains.) Wiener wasn’t quite satisfied
with that compromise either.
Wiener worked instead as a jack-of-all-trades builder in the tiny
Tomales Bay town of Marshall, co-founded the first organic dairy
west of the Mississippi, and taught himself to build furniture.
Slowly though, the boatyard began to pull him back. “I thought
that when you learn something rigorous like boatbuilding, you
can apply it to anything,” he says. “That’s not true.”
Wiener moved back to Sausalito with his wife and two daugh
ters, joined the Spaulding yard in 1978, and took over yard opera
tions in 2000. In 2002, following the death of its founder, the
yard became a nonprofit, the Spaulding Center for Wooden Boats.
Wiener is on the board of directors.
It would be a pleasure to talk more, find out what he’s reading,
if he finds time to sail, and how he thinks St. John’s has changed.
But the lunch break is over, and Wiener’s eyes are already darting
back to the corner of the yard, where his expertise is needed.
For more information on wooden boat restoration classes at the
Spaulding Centerfor Wooden Boats, call
Kait Schott,
SF91___________________________
Jewelry maker, metal and glass worker
Kait Schott may have spent the years since her graduation
learning fine craftsmanship of the most demanding sort, but for
Johnnies her most impressive achievement is one seemingly unre
lated to her professional life: Schott completed freshman lab five
times, once as a freshman and four times as a lab assistant.
After graduation, rather than taking up a career as a profes
sional baros specialist, Schott returned to her native Minnesota.
There, after spending nearly five years employed as a goldsmith,
she now crafts her own jewelry out of metal and glass.
But all those years in freshman lab helped lead Schott to her
work. Her lab experiences contributed to her interest in working
with actual, not metaphoric, materials. In freshman lab, she
explains, “there’s a struggle with a physical object, with the
tension between you and the physical stuff.”
In freshman lab, the stuff in question is likely to be clay
weights, simple chemical solutions, or cat innards. Eor gold
smiths, the stakes are somewhat higher. But Schott maintains
SF91
that both are expressions of the same contest, “over whether or
not you are going to achieve the eidos of the thing that’s in your
head.”
Having grown up in a family where her mother and grandmotherwere “always making something,” she was inspired by the
wealth of materials available in Santa Ee. While still a student at
St. John’s, she began visiting the bead dealers at the city’s flea
market. Soon she was making simple jewelry for friends and
giving it away. Later, she began selling her work “just to support
the habit.”
Though she had had no professional training at this point,
Schott had already identified one of the key principles drawing
her to work with jewelry. “Jewelry is so personal,” she says. “It’s
expressing a really primitive urge. You find a little trinket that just
has something about it, and you want to take it with you. So you
put it on a string.”
She also realized early that she wasn’t interested in making
jewelry that looked like everyone else’s: “Jewelry is also very
personal in the sense that it’s expressive. The pieces I make are
not particularly narrative, but the person who wears them makes
a decision about what they want to portray.”
Schott’s own decision, after graduating from St. John’s, was to
continue the experiment she had begun as a student, “to really
engage the physical stuff of the world.” Her first steps took her to
the San Francisco area, where she took metalsmithing classes at
the Richmond Art Center. Armed with new technical skill, she
moved back to Minneapolis, found a glass workshop, and eventu
ally attended trade school for metalworking.
There, she learned to cast, polish, solder, and set stones in an
atmosphere that encouraged neither creativity nor discussion.
Though, she muses, “it was like St. John’s in that everything was
laid out for you.”
After graduating from trade school, she worked for four-and-ahalf years as a hired “pair of hands” in a large jewelry shop
specializing in complex and expensive gold wedding bands. The
work was challenging, but not creative, and it demanded speed
and skill. “As a goldsmith, there was a constant battle of will
between me, the stuff, and the clock,” she says. While the first
two elements of that equation were familiar, the third posed more
difficulty: “Given a choice between more perfect and more quick,
I always chose more perfect. I do have an appreciation of having
some efficiency and speed. But I also know that there are limits to
how fast I’m ever going to do something and still enjoy it.”
In 2003, Schott quit work as a goldsmith, moved to an artists’
co-operative, and decided to concentrate on her own work. “I
want to sit back and think for a while again about what I really
wanted to make,” she explains.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Johnnies at Work}
Lately, that has led her to work extensively with glass; she’s
fascinated hy the way that glass responds to heat. “I think most
people can anticipate what metal will he hke when it’s heated. But
glass becomes really fluid when you work with it. It’s just magic.
The material itself is a seduction.”
The new work pattern has also given her time to return to her
roots. With a local alumni chapter, she recently revisited Goethe’s
“On the Metamorphosis of Plants.” At this distance from
freshman year, she sees in the essay a meditation on the artist’s
struggle. “It’s a great metaphor for feeding yourself creatively,
for developing into something new and different,” she says.
“The sense of striving that Goethe seems to ascribe to the plant is
hke the struggle to take the world and try to making something
out of it.”
Kait Schott’s work, including a recent series ofplantforms in glass
inspired by Goethe, can be viewed at www. kaitschott. com.
Ben Shook, SFoo
Carpenter
Ben Shook explains his decision to become a craftsman as though
it were composed, like a wooden joint from one of the chairs he
builds, of two separate pieces which fit together perfectly;
“St. John’s left me with student loans and some inextricable
idealism. I probably already had the idealism. So I had to make
a living.”
Shook’s tone is self-mocking, but he’s perfectly serious about
In her work, Kait Schott (SF91) struggles with
“the eidos of the thing that’s in your head.”
17
materials and
the idealism. It kept him up nights as he was beginning his
apprenticeship, practicing in his own shop the skills he’d
observed during the day. And today it’s the driving force behind
the thriving small business he runs out of his Portland home.
Shook felt the first stirrings of interest in fine woodworking
while visiting a museum. He spent the year after his graduation
traveling and working in France. One day, he visited the Musee
des Arts et Metiers, the Paris museum devoted to the finest prod
ucts of French craftsmanship and engineering from the Middle
Ages to the present. The masterworks in wood, stone, and metal
that he saw there convinced him that “the depths to which one
could take this craft are unfathomable.”
Shook returned to Dayton, Wash., found a job as a bartender,
and bought some tools. Working from books and studying furni
ture, he began to build what he now calls “rustic things,” roughhewn desks and bookcases made using wood salvaged from old
barns. He still had no formal training, but the results were
compelling. “One day, this woman who owned a gallery came by,”
he recalls. “And she bought everything, about ao pieces. She just
said, T’ll take all of it for my shop.’”
Encouraged by the sudden success. Shook decided to get
serious. In aooa he apprenticed with a French master carpenter
in Washington, working for low wages and “asking him questions
every second there wasn’t a machine on.” By the end of the year.
Shook had learned the basics of timber-frame construction and
{The College • St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
�i8
{Johnnies at Work}
felt ready to strike out
on his own.
Today, Shook em
ploys two assistant
woodworkers in a
large shop attached to
his Portland home.
His business has
grown rapidly in the
last few years, mostly
through word of
mouth. Working by
hand and with power
tools, he and his assis
tants spend at least
one month on each
major furniture piece.
The shop spent nearly
half of last year furnishing a whole house for just one client.
Slowness is one of the qualities Shook appreciates in his work,
one of the principles he’s distilled from his beginnings in the
craft. “Working with wood requires a different orientation to
time,” he says. “The time is so great with some projects. You just
have to let go of the male perception of working at something from
beginning to end. You have to think in days and weeks. You have
to have a real patience for letting glues set up, for just learning to
let something sit.”
Shook’s latest passion is building chairs. “I’m getting really
into them,” he confesses. “Chairs are the most human kind of
furniture, the thing that you put your body in rather than on.” The
chair design he’s working on now has no metal parts; the seat is
hand-shaped. Its secret. Shook says, is a special central joint orig
inally designed by master builder Sam Malouf: “It’s such a beau
tiful and simple joint, and it’s so strong.”
Joints are, of course, the heart of the furniture maker’s craft, and
Shook has spent some time considering them. At the moment, it
seems to him to be a question of creating union. “The marriage of
two pieces of wood in a joint is such a delicate and precise thing,”
he says. “And when it’s done right, it’s a forever marriage.”
If Shook sounds as though he’s been considering words closely
as well, that’s no accident either. When he isn’t working in the
shop, one of his interests is writing poetry, which he says is “sort
of like making furniture.”
Visit WWW. benshook. com.
Ben Shook(SFoo)
WORKS ON A CHAIR,
“the most human
KIND OF FURNITURE,”
IN HIS Portland shop.
Jordan Finch
(SFoo)
Builder
Jordan Finch’s career
as a builder of beau
tiful homes has its
roots in his junior
year at St. John’s,
when he experienced
a revelation. Having enjoyed woodworking as a hobby, he knew he
wanted to build things-big things, beautiful things-after gradu
ating from the college.
“I had this idea that I wanted to build cathedrals,” he says. “I
went on this long search to learn about them, but it never quite
panned out-there just weren’t many cathedrals being built.”
However, Finch has found something nearly as satisfying in
building timber-frame homes, characterized by soaring ceilings,
heavy exposed beams, craftsmanship, and durability. He is
rapidly becoming a master of the same post-and-beam construc
tion methods that contributed to the majesty of Europe’s great
cathedrals.
Timber framing has been practiced for centuries, but in modern
times, stick-built construction-faster and cheaper-has prevailed,
“until the 1960s, when hippies began reviving the craft,” says
Finch.
Picture an old-fashioned Amish barn raising and you’ll get a
sense of the work Finch does. Without a few dozen men to raise
the frame that serves as the skeleton of the house. Finch relies on
the modern crane. But in every other way-the precise fitting of
tenon into mortise, securing joined timbers with pegs of solid
wood-Finch uses time-honored and traditional methods to build
homes. “There’s a great geometry to it all. When you’re building
these homes, you have to hold this visual image in your head. It’s
like doing Euclid in 3-D,” he says.
Finch took up carpentry as a teenager, and he has been
perfecting his craft since graduating from St. John’s in 2000.
While spending junior year in Annapolis, he stole time from his
studies to build a boat. That summer, the college’s Placement
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Johnnies at Work}
office (now Career Services) helped Finch find a job with Steve
Whalen (SF83), who had a carpentry business in Southwest
Harbor, Maine. “I told him I was attending St. John’s and knew
how to use a hammer and he said, ‘come on up.’ ” After gradua
tion, Finch served a two-year apprenticeship with Vicco von Voss,
a custom furniture maker in Chestertown, Md. “It’s probably
been the highpoint of life in craftsmanship so far,” he says.
Von Voss began designing his own timber-frame home, and
Finch contributed his construction expertise to the project. Along
the way, he recognized that he had found a solid substitute for
cathedrals. When his apprenticeship ended. Finch found a job
with Lancaster County Timber Frames in Pennsylvania. “I had the
basic skills, but I wanted to get faster,” he explains. “There are
shops like these throughout the country and a lot of them do
beautiful work, but it really is high tempo.”
Finch’s “meditative” methods weren’t a good fit with highpressure shops, so he took his tools and went out on his own as an
itinerant joiner, subcontracting for other timber framers on proj
ects in Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and Massachusetts. After a year
and a half of honing his craft on the road. Finch moved to Virginia
to marry Quinby Owen (Aoa) and settle down in the Shenandoah
Valley town of Mount Jackson.
19
When Quinby’s parents needed to find a builder for their home,
their new son-in-law talked them into hiring him. It was his first
opportunity to design a home and to build it from start to finish.
Never mind the r6-hour days; it’s been well worth it, he says.
“We raised the frame on Oct. 33, 2004. I’ve been involved in
quite a few raisings, and there’s always a sense of expectation and
eagerness in the air, but this time, it was really satisfying,” he says.
There is a wholeness to the work that appeals to Finch each time
he takes up his tools. “I’ve gone from milling the tree to sanding
something to a mirror polish. Sometimes you smell like a
chainsaw, other days you need a surgeon’s touch just to take a
sliver of wood away,” he says. “That really gives me a sense of
fulfillment-it feels natural and complete.”
People are surprised to hear that timber framing is a green
building method, he says. “Timber framing does take larger,
mature trees,” he acknowledges. “But if a building will stand for
300 years or more, that’s a responsible use of materials.”
Happy to create anything out of a beautiful piece of wood. Finch
still makes furniture and recently accepted a commission for a
dining room table. With Quinby expecting a baby when he
started his business. Finch named his shop Finch and Sons Fine
Woodworking. Since the arrival of daughter Aurelia, now almost
one, he’s had to reconsider the name.
“How does Finch Family Woodworkers
sound?”
For questions on timber-frame construc
tion, contact Finch at Jordanafinch®
yahoo.com or at 540-333-0034.
—Rosemary Harty
Quinby (Aoa), Jordan (Aoo), and Aurelia
Finch, in the home Jordan is building in
Virginia.
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�ao
{The Program}
SMALL WAVES IN
A TRANQUIL SEA”
Melville, Literature, and the St. Johns Reading List
wi Rosemary Harty
ow many Johnnies have read-or even
heard oi-The History of Henry
Esmond?. Thackeray’s novel, the
story of Henry and his love for
Beatrix, was on the list of hooks that
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan
assembled for the New Program, first
published in The Bulletin ofSt. John’s
College. It was the Bulletin that in
1937 set out the specifics of the Program for prospective students
and the rest of the world, and here, the college’s criteria for
choosing a classic was defined. The first two involve magnitude:
“A great book must have been read by the largest number of
persons”; for clarity, works by Plato and the Bible are mentioned
in this regard. The work also must offer the possibility of many
different interpretations. It must “raise the persistent unanswer
able questions about the great themes in European thought.” And
the final two criteria: it must be “a work of fine art” and a
“masterpiece of the liberal arts.”
These criteria have guided choices for the college’s reading list
for nearly 70 years. A self-study conducted by Annapolis faculty
for reaccredidation two years ago acknowledged that, “although
there is broad agreement about our reading list, certain authors,
texts, and text selections regularly come up for discussion. The
Senior Seminar list, which contains the most recently written
books, is always the most controversial. Even here, however,
upon annual review of the Program by the Instruction
{The College.
Committee, there is far more stability than change, and our
concerns amount to small waves in a largely tranquil sea.”
Changes-major and minor-to the list come slowly and with
careful deliberation. This is not done to preserve a canon, but
rather, a continuum, as the self-study report states: “Year after
year, for at least two hours on Monday and Thursday nights,
students and tutors discuss the same books in the same way with
the sense that here, in the thinking, speaking, and listening that
go on in the Seminar, the College is most alive and most itself.”
A number of books read for seminar have dropped off that first
list included in the Bulletin, including Goethe’s Faust, Fielding’s
Tom Jones, and Corneille’s Le Cid. Moby-Dick-'wXdCti many
faculty and alumni would consider a perfect match with that 1937
definition of a great book-has been out of the list for some time.
It hasn’t been read in seminar in Annapolis for 3r years and has
made sporadic appearances on the Santa Fe seminar list. In recent
years Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner have joined the
senior seminar list at the urging of some tutors and over the
objections of others.
Considering suggestions and objections from tutors and
students is the work of the Instruction Committee, comprising
13 tutors (six from each campus), the deans of both campuses,
and the two presidents as ex-officio members. The IC is respon
sible for the program of instruction, and with it, has the power
to add or remove a book from the reading list. Changes are
made by consensus, not by majority rule, and also are governed
by transferability.
St. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
�{ThePrOGRAM}
{The College -St John’s College • Winter 2006 }
ai
�aa
{TheProgram}
''Chiefamong these motives was the
overwhelming idea ofthe great whale hitnself
Such aportentous and mysterious monster
roused all my curiosity ”
Ishmael
Annapolis tutor Anita Kronsberg (A79) says the committee
considers factors such as “whether a book has the kind of weight
and substance” worthy of study and discussion, and whether it
connects in interesting ways to other books on the reading list.
Each year, the committee reviews reports submitted by the tutors
who served as the recorders for their seminars. These reports help
the committee decide if a certain reading is working well in
seminar, and along with specific requests, factor in decisions to
change the list.
When a book comes off the reading list, it’s usually to make
room for another. There are sacrifices and sometimes compro
mises, because in the harsh light of reality, “we can’t read all great
books,” Kronsberg says. The nature of the college’s Program
(roughly chronological) means that fewer changes will be made
when Ancient Greek and medieval works are concerned.
A few years ago, the committee made an earnest attempt to find
room for The Sound and the Fury, “but we couldn’t put it any
where in the seminar where the students could read it,” she says.
“It’s a very beautiful book, some of Faulkner’s finest writing,”
Kronsberg says, almost wistfully. “The approach he takes is not
like anything else we read.”
Don Quixote is one of a handful ofvery long novels Johnnies are
asked to read in the Program, most timed for summer or winter
breaks to allow time to read and ponder before seminar meets. But
discussion is still condensed to two meetings on books like War
and Peace and Middlemarch.
It’s not entirely satisfying, but that’s another reality of the
Program: “We acknowledge that St. John’s is a place where some
books get a first reading,” says Kronsberg. Whether it’s a long
novel, a complex poem, or a passage from Kant, returning to the
work provides a fuller view.
Santa Fe tutor Frank Pagano says the IC on his campus usually
concentrates on two years of the Program at a time: freshman and
junior years, or sophomore and senior. When the committee
makes changes to the list, it’s often in the interest of choosing
books that “work well in seminar.”
“We want books to be great,” says Pagano, a tutor of aa years.
“That’s easy to experience, but hard to nail down.” To illustrate
his point, Pagano points to difficulties in reading Supreme Court
decisions for seminar. While important, they don’t quite work as
Program books, in his opinion. “Inevitably they require historical
background-that’s a sign that something isn’t great,” he says.
In Santa Fe about five years ago, the IC decided to add
Maimonides (Guidefor the Perplexed} to the sophomore reading
list. “It’s a great book in itself. But the second reason it works in
seminar is that you have two traditions that the Bible represents,
and we had no theology that was Jewish.” Maimonides also speaks
to other Program authors, says Pagano: “He’s picked up on in
junior year by Spinoza, especially.”
Although changes to the reading list have not been monu
mental ones, the Instruction Committee could vote by consensus
to remove Plato’s Republic-Mt^My unlikely, but by the rules
governing the committee, not impossible. “The thought is we
could change anything,” Pagano notes.
However, substantial changes to philosophy are pretty rare.
“They’re all part of a tradition, and it’s very hard to take one out
and put one in,” he says. “If you’re going to do Hegel and not
do Kant, you’re not going to be able to see who Hegel is
responding to.”
Pagano would like to see Johnnies read Absalom, Absalom—“a
book that encapsulates the American tradition better, as well as
the Southern problem.” He’d choose Faulkner over Moby-Dick,
which he finds interesting, but not as compelling.
“I delivered a speech on Moby-Dick in high school,” he adds as
a side-note, “and that speech was a bit of a bomb.”
Moby-Dick first appeared on the college reading list for seniors
in 1952-53. It was read for many years in the 1950s and made brief
reappearances in Annapolis and Santa Fe, most recently in 2003.
It lives on in preceptorials, yet some tutors think it’s a shame not
all students read the work because it is the type of work-like so
many books that remain on the Program-that needs to be
discussed to be understood.
How did Melville’s novel first get the boot? The prevailing
legend in Annapolis is that too many students were writing essays
on the book. With only a list of prize-winning essays available to
check, the memory of veteran tutors was consulted.
“Oh, it’s absolutely not apocryphal,” says Eva Brann (HA89).
“I distinctly remember one year there were at least 10 essays
written on the book.”
Tutor Malcolm Wyatt (HA03), who joined the college in 1958,
recalls that too many bad essays were being written about MobyDick. “The temptation of allegory was too much for students-the
white whale, why is he white, the peg leg-itwas away to grind out
a senior essay without much serious thought,” he says.
In Santa Fe, the book was last read in senior seminar in the
spring of 2003, but it wasn’t a success in the eyes of tutor Howard
Fisher. That may be because it was read while seniors were writing
their senior essay. (In Annapolis, seminar is suspended with all
{The College- St. John's College • Winter 2006 }
�{TheProgram}
as
“ .. ril chase him round GoodHope, and
round the horn, and round the norway
maelstrom, and roundperditions
flames before Igive him up.
Ahab
Other classes for the writing period, while Santa Fe students meet
for seminar for part of the time.) “As wonderful as the book is, the
seminars were not a success,” Fisher says. “I had been in a senior
seminar or two in Annapohs where we read it as part of the
Program, and it seemed to me that we had as good a discussion as
any other book. It is episodic, and that makes it difficult to sustain
a unified conversation, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.”
Most years, on one campus or the other, Moby-Dick is offered in
preceptorial, and it’s a popular offering. Annapolis tutor
Jonathan Tuck tried to lead a precept on the novel a few times,
only to find other tutors got there first. “In some ways, having
frequent preceptorials honors Moby-Dick more, because it gets
the reading it needs,” Tuck offers.
Santa Fe Thtor Claudia Honeywell loved the preceptorial she
led on the book. “Oh, would that it could be on the Program,” she
says. “At the time I chose it for precept, I was really interested in
it. I felt like it was my discovery-T’ve found this great book, let’s
read it together.’ ”
For Honeywell, Moby-Dick more than meets the college’s
criteria for a great book: “It’s endlessly fascinating. You’re never
done reading it, and there’s no way to be done reading it. Even as
you’re formulating the line of interpretation, you’re left in an
uncomfortable place-just as Ishmael is. The book has no
apparent resolutions.”
It was “a bummer” that the novel came off the reading list,
Honeywell says, because “we don’t have it as an element of our
common discourse. It’s a book that can really accompany us
through the moral uncertainty of life. There’s the famous passage
where Ahab talks about how human life is lived, that men hide
behind a pasteboard mask if they’re there at all. I think about that
now and then, I see situations that trigger memories of it.”
As one of their rewards for finishing the novel, Annapolis tutor
Nathan Dugan invited his students a few years ago to a party,
complete with clam chowder. Dugan had read it for the first time
just a year before and was eager to read Moby-Dick with students.
The preceptorial was productive, but it took hard work to make
such a vast book the subject of coherent discussions, he notes.
“The good thing is that you can go through very slowly and spend
a lot more time on the parts,” he says. “The difficult thing is
that you can’t require everyone to read 1,000 pages before you
start. But with the right of questions, a glimpse of the whole can
come out.”
What the novel would add to the program as a whole is a
portrait of human beings as seekers and interpreters of symbols
{The College.
and meaning, Dugan adds, something that relates well to Platonic
dialogues Johnnies read as freshmen. “In the end it’s telling us
something about why we need to be self-aware,” he says.
Dugan sees no compelling reason Melville’s tale must be on the
reading list. And yet, he allows, “fife would be more full” if he
could teach Moby-Dick and Joyce’s Ulysses.
Having taught two preceptorials on the book, Annapolis tutor
David Townsend acknowledges the impracticality of Moby-Dick
as a seminar reading. Yet in his view, the novel is “one of the dozen
great novels ever written.” The book confronts themes of man and
nature, hierarchy and obedience, freedom and equality.
“It addresses the struggle to build a community and how
essential that is,” he says. “It points out that you don’t have an
individual self outside of the community. It’s eclectic and diverse
in the cultures that it depicts. And it’s also contemporary in that
it’s one of the first books to address a global economy and the
psychological and moral effects of commerce.”
In addition to the length, one problematic issue in Melville’s
tale is an absence of women, something that can’t be said
about Middlemarch. Townsend would not want to see Eliot’s
novel sacrificed for another fictional work. “It’s a very rich and
coherent story, more manageable in two seminar discussions”
than Moby-Dick.
St. John’s is not trying to establish a canon, even if it seems that
way to outsiders, says Townsend. And yet the college gets letters
and e-mails from those who look to “the great books college” to
decide what “great” books they should read. A few years ago, a
group of Canadian doctors asked for the reading list. Most
recently, an Iowa man wrote to ask for a copy of the list; he
planned to ask his local library to post it for patrons.
“Because we don’t have time to read everything, it often seems
that if someone’s not on our reading list, it’s because we’ve found
that the work is not as important,” says Townsend. That’s not the
case, he adds. “These books at this moment in time are the ones
that work well in conversation for our community.”
Honeywell expresses a similar sentiment. “There are so many
friends out there, and we can only invite so many to the party, yet
you still think about your friends. We form our own relationships
with books, and they are like friends.”
To find out what Johnnies are reading today, visit the St. John's
Website: www.stjohnscollege.edu.
Sf. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
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2.4
PLATO, ARISTOTLE,
BALDWIN?
The College magazine asked readers to suggest books they would
like to see on the St. John’s reading list. The question drew an
interesting variety ofresponses, with essays, novels, and works of
philosophy suggested. Here are some ofthe offerings:
Notes ofa Native Son would be a happy addition to the senior
seminar list, perhaps following close upon the Lincoln and Faulkner
readings.
—Kevin Schnadig,
SF98
Death in Venice
Notes ofa Native Son
The playwright August Strindberg once wrote about his experience
of reading the complete works of Balzac, something over 50
volumes. When he had finished he felt, as he tells us, that he had
lived an entire life condensed into the space of a couple of seasons.
And that his own life now, whatever remained of it, took on the
quality of a kind of second life, a strange addition to the life he had
lived vicariously through the great author.
There are other kinds of works, however, not oeuvres but single
volumes, that leave their readers with a much different impression.
They do not make us feel that we have passed through the entirety of
a life but rather, and this is their particular strength, convey to us a
sense, both tortuous and exhilarating, of the essential incomplete
ness of life, of time fraught with interruptions, cut into so many
fragments of unclear and mutilated histories, and interwoven with a
dizzying variety of fictions and hes.
The book 1 have in mind is James Baldwin’s Notes ofa Native Son,
a collection of essays first published in 1955. These essays, brilliantly
incorporating original insights into the works of Shakespeare,
Dante, Milton, Faulkner, Kafka, and so many others, deal primarily
with two themes, both literary and philosophical in scope: the
encounter between human beings with different cultures, different
ways of thinking and different superficial appearances; and the
experience, individual as well as collective, of being an exile,
geographically as well as psychologically. Notes ofa Native Son is,
but is also much more than, a book about the experience of black
Americans in the aoth century. Speaking of this experience,
Baldwin writes that “the depthless alienation from oneself and one’s
people is, in sum, the American experience.” But it is also, one
comes to realize while reading these essays, an essentially philo
sophical experience. For there is a certain kind of understanding
that arises only from the point of view of an exile. St. John’s students
and tutors will immediately call to mind the cases of Socrates,
Christ, Dante, Spinoza, and Frederick Douglass, to name a few. It is
the moment when all that is familiar becomes violently and threat
eningly unfamihar, and one is compelled, if one has a penchant for
intellectual honesty, to re-evaluate those most fundamental notions
of self and other, truth and lies.
As I believe St. John’s is at bottom an attempt to cultivate these
moments of understanding by passionate discussion of ideas, I think
I first encountered this book during my freshman year at Kenyon
College, an experience which instantly changed my life. I have
re-read it several times since... and after each reading, as in all the
works on the reading fist, I understand more, both about the book
and about the experience of being human, particularly that of falling
in love. It would be wonderful if all St. John’s students had the oppor
tunity to read and discuss Death in Venice.
I suggest this book for three reasons. First, the reading list
contains very little 20th-century fiction, and Mann’s tale is certainly
one of the best examples, written before the First World War and the
emergence of Modernism, yet the style and tone appear to signal the
approach of the movement. Second, Death in Venice is short enough
to be discussed in one seminar class, while containing enough chal
lenging material to provoke a thoughtful, lively conversation.
Third, and most importantly, the subject matter, the elderly
von Aschenbach’s erotic longing for the teenaged Tadzio, is
guaranteed to spark debate, especially in light of current events. At
the same time, however, it will require students to revisit their discus
sions of ancient Greek notions of eros, especially as expressed in
Plato’s Lysis, Symposium, and Phaedrus. Indeed, Death in Venice
maybe viewed as a 20th-century commentary on the Platonic idea of
love, even incorporating sections of the relevant dialogues into the
novella. This work serves as a transition of sorts, from the values and
beliefs of ancient Greece to those of the modern world, and for all
these reasons, it would make an excellent addition to the reading fist.
—Charles Green, AGIoa
The Decameron
It’s absolutely imperative that we add Giovanni Boccaccio’s
14th-century masterpiece. The Decameron, to the sophomore
curriculum. Boccaccio’s tales of true love and high adventure (and
depraved monks, which are what everyone who reads The
Decameron seems to remember best) will provide a wonderful relief
to sophomores recently completing their study of St. Anselm and
Aquinas. Rather than depicting how people ought to behave in an
ideal world-a “city of God” so to speak- The Decameron depicts
how they behave in the real world, wherein people are more apt to
pursue love, and sex, and wealth than divine absolution. As such we
shall be reassured that not everyone in the Middle Ages spent all
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their time woefully
recounting their sins
and attempting to
understand God’s
power and majesty.
But of course,
perhaps the greatest
case for adding
The Decameron to
the curriculum is
Brother B,obert, who
has long feared the
deduction of his
beloved Rabelais
from the Program
list. Obviously, as
The Decameron is
about IO times dirtier
than anything that can be found in Pantagruel and Gargantua it
would be wholly illogical to deduct Rabelais from the curriculum
and leave Boccacio on. Thus, the fears of one of our oldest and
most respected tutors will at long last be assuaged, and sophomores
will have gotten a delectable new read which provides a different,
lighthearted, and secular perspective on the Middle Ages.
—Jennifer Wright, ao8
The Rule of St. Benedict, The Philosophy ofFreedom
I have always thought that the jump from Augustine to Aquinas is
too large, a thousand years, and that The Rule of Saint Benedict
would fit nicely, as it was much read and often observed in between,
so preserving literature from one era for the next.
The aoth century is the serious question.. . Which Western
writers of the aoth century will be studied through the aist?
How many thinkers have given new direction to painting, sculpture,
dance, speech, music, drama, agriculture, finance, medicine,
religion, and education? There is only one whose insights into
embryology, physiology, astronomy, geology, botany, and zoology
wfil guide fruitful research for generations.
Rudolf Steiner has put before us in a new light so many subjectsepistemology, moral technique, meditative practice, evolution of
consciousness, social life-that the prospect of rethinking every
thought we hold may keep us from approaching his books.
Yet the faculty of St. John’s is under pressure to study anthroposophy from at least two directions. Advances in physics are rapidly
overwhelming Cartesian dualism. Philosophy cannot disregard
science. New generations of students will expect their college
professors to understand the foundations of their experience...
Die Philosophic der Freiheit (1894) is the best introduction.
There are at least three English translations... Rudolf Steiner’s
contribution to Western thought is placed in the same rank as the
work of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. In The Philosophy of
as
Author James
Baldwin belongs on
THE READING LIST,
SAYS AN ALUMNUS.
Freedom, Steiner
leads the reader, by
means of pure
thinking, to the
source of his
knowledge. Having
made that effort, one
is competent to eval
uate his statements,
which the faculty of
St. John’s will shortly
be obliged to do.
—Lisa S. Turner, parent
(Douglas Turner, A04)
Atlas Shrugged____________________________________________
While scorned by many academic philosophers, the book has had a
tremendous impact on popular perceptions of philosophy,
including among many highly educated people. In addition, the
book has gained at least some ground in academia. There are a
handful of colleges where some philosophers embrace Ayn Rand,
and many others where at least short selections from her books are
included in survey courses on ethics and political philosophy.
I recently re-read the book after more than ao years. My
perceptions have evolved and changed, and I was dismayed to
discover how flawed much of the writing is. In particular, Rand’s
“bad guys” are drawn as comic-book characters. Even so, there is
much that is compelling in her writing, and the philosophical
heroes of the novel give some very thought-provoking speeches.
The ideas in the novel span the entire range of philosophical
issues, from metaphysics and epistemology to ethics, politics, art,
and even the role of sexuality in human relations.
Possibly the best reason: With the lone exception of Aristotle,
whose metaphysics and logic she embraces, Rand attacks virtually
the entire canon of Western philosophical thought, from Plato to
Descartes to Hume and Kant, right up to the present day post
structuralists and post-modernists. One of the best lines in the
whole novel, found in the long Galt speech, is: “The choice is still
open to be a human being, but the price is to start from scratch, to
stand naked in the face of reality and, reversing a costly historical
error, to declare: T am; therefore I will think.’”
The purpose of reading a book at St. John’s is to provoke lively
discussion. And particularly for seniors in the undergraduate
program, I can’t imagine a better book to challenge the entire
body of work they have read in earlier years of the Program. . .
{The College. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
—Steve Oppenheimer, AGIoa
�^6
{Homecoming}
O, PIONEERS!
The Class ofigss Returns
BY Rosemary Harty
oyce Kittel Wilson (class of 1955)
had a lot to learn from men like
Jacob Klein, J. Winfree Smith, and
Curtis Wilson. She also remem
St. John’s-particularly her classmate,
bers some of the things she learned
Anita (Jane) Gerber Denison.
from women-the first to attend
“Jane taught me how to smoke,” Wilson
recalls.
“I just don’t remember that,” Denison
says.
Cigarettes were an ever-present prop for
students and tutors alike. “We could
smoke in class, and most of the students
and tutors did,” Wilson recalls,
Denison and Wilson were catching up in
the home of Sam (class of 1954) and Emily
(class of 1955) Kutler, who hosted a
Saturday-afternoon luncheon at their
home during Homecoming Weekend. As
with most of the conversations around the
room, the subjects alternated between
“what are you doing now?” and “do you
remember this?”
Homecoming is always festive, lively,
and full of memories, but this year it was
especially nostalgic, as members of the
Class of 1955-the first to include women-returned for their 50th
anniversary. The class had 48 members, nine of whom have
passed away. Sixteen members of the class attended their reunion,
traveling from far and wide. They smiled at imitations of Jacob
Klein’s accent or memories of President Richard Weigle’s
attempts to keep the female citizens of St. John’s safe from bad
influences. They were pioneers, and they had pioneers’ stories,
such as the “open door” rule required for men and women to be in
the same dorm room at the same time. They also talked about
getting their tutors and male classmates used to having women in
class and on campus.
As Wilson puts it, the men of St. John’s did not accept the inva
sion of women quietly. “They went kicking and screaming into the
fray,” she says.
Denison graduated from Towson High School, north of Balti-
J
{The College
They encountered many challenges, but Joyce Wilson and Jane
Gerber Denison ( both class of 1955) share fond memories of
BEING the first WOMEN TO ATTEND St. JoHn’s CoLLEGE.
more, and she won a scholarship to attend St. John’s. She made it
through three years at the college and found it rigorous, chal
lenging, and sometimes overwhelming. “The college was so much
smaller then. You had 15 in a seminar, and there was no way you
could hide. If you weren’t prepared, everyone knew it,” she says.
“The oral exams, and the don rags-I dreaded those like poison.”
She left close to the end of junior year and returned to
Baltimore to find work. But she was summoned back to Annapolis
by Jacob Klein, then dean of the college. “I went to his house.
He was a very persuasive man. He wanted me to come back, and I
did, but I was very confused, and I left again.”
- St John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
�{Homecoming}
A Toast to Toasts
women cloy/ The appetites they feed: but she-this college
makes hungry/ where most she satisfies.’”
It’s a fine tradition: at the end of the Saturday-night
Homecoming banquet, alumni raise a glass in honor of their
classmates and in gratitude to the college. More recent classes
go first, paving the way for the Johnnies who studied in the
old program. Here are a few of the sentiments offered this year
in Annapolis:
Graduate Institute, all years, Linda Stabler-Talty
(SFGI76): “We’ve always heard it said that the Graduate Insti
27
tute is a refined version of the program. And we do admit that
we are an amorphous group, we don’t have [typical] reunions.
We dare say our wise perspective has helped us understand
what St. John’s means to all of us together.. .. We raise our
glasses to this collective enterprise of St. John’s College.”
Class of 1995, Zena Hitz : “At reunions, we tend to think a lot
about the past, partly because we’re St. John’s alumni, and
we’re sentimental. . . . What I’ve enjoyed about Homecoming is
seeing what people are doing now, what their lives are like,
meeting the people they love, hearing about their work,
finding out what they’re thinking about-so I would like to raise
a toast to the class of 1995: Our lives, our love, our work.”
Class of 1980, Ken Ross: “I know some of my classmates
knew me as a very shy person in r98o and so they elected me
anyway. I really enjoyed meeting my old friends and making
new friends here. And to this very special college-here’s to the
class of 1980!”
Class of 1975, Jim Jarvis: “One of the most delightful things
about being at a 30th reunion is to realize that we’re now the
reunion where most of the people have gray hair-which is
great. And to see that so many of these people are so amazingly
accomplished, and have not lost their love for books and ideas.
All of us I think would say about St. John’s College, what
[Domitius Enobarbus] says in Antony and Cleopatra'. ‘Age
cannot wither her, nor custom stale/Her infinite variety: other
Denison went on to a marriage, a rich family fife that included
five step-children, and a satisfying career as a professional editor.
But she can still see Klein, who died in 1978, as if it were yesterday.
“He always had this little twinkle in his eye.”
Yet Denison left St. John’s feeling well prepared for the future,
and she treasures the memories she took with her.
“At that time, it was a very small community, and all of us
women were new to it. We were close, and that was nice,” she says.
If Denison left because she was young and unsure of her path in
fife, Wilson left for another reason many college-age women
encountered: marriage. She married Gerald Wilson (class of
1956) and became pregnant with her first child in her third year.
“There was a saying at St. John’s, ‘ifyou’re unable to enable, have
a baby,”’ she recalls,
Wilson enabled, but left when classwork became too much for
her. “I remember I had trouble keeping up with my fruit fly exper
iment-! had let some get loose,” she recalls.
She went on to have four children, and was one of the first
women on the East Coast trained in the computer language
COBOL. “I liked the logic in programming, and I was good at it,”
she says. Later, after moving to California for her husband’s
career, she earned a paralegal certificate and worked for law firms.
{The College.
Class of 1970, Steve Forman: “When people ask me if I went
to St. John’s for the books I say no, I actually came here for the
sports. Upon reflection I realized who I studied Euclid with, I
know who I studied the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle with. I also
remember who played for the Druids and how we hated the
Hustlers. Because of what I realize is important about that
other side of the Program that provided the balance in our fives
with the studying and the thinking and the conversations, I
think I’d like to [toast the late] Bryce Jacobsen [class of 1942,
former athletic director].”
Class of 1935, Roland Bailey: “. .. A toast to all of us who
have lived in accordance with the philosophy of Rabelais: ‘To
five: in general and tolerant fellowship with man and nature; in
grateful appreciation of the good things of fife; and in cheerful
expectation of all of fife’s inescapable vicissitudes.’ ”
(A poetic toastfrom Priscilla Husted Griscom, class ofiggs, can
befound on the inside back cover q/The College./
The women who entered St. John’s in r95r paved the way for
those who would come later; several women from later classes-all
the way up to 2004-joined the Kutler luncheon to hear the
stories and help the pioneers celebrate. Steered to St. John’s by a
teacher in her Cleveland High School who spotted her engrossed
in Moby-Dick, Josephine Jaster Poe (class of 1957) thought
St. John’s was still for men only when she first heard about it.
“Then I learned they had opened it up to women, but my father
said I couldn’t go,” she recalls. “I did anyway. And when I got
here, I had no sense that women were ever a problem. I was just
one of the boys.”
Her husband, Harvey Poe (class of 1952), later a tutor and dean
of St. John’s, recalls that the college embraced the idea that
“women could do anything the men could do.”
The college’s history also was a focal point of the weekend.
Tylden Streett (class of 1950) unveiled two plaster busts of New
Program founders Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan (see
page 5r). Class of T955 member Priscilla Bender-Shore brought
her series of oil paintings inspired by the Muses to share with the
college community and alumni during the weekend.
Charles Nelson (class of r945) set the tone for the weekend with
the Friday-night Homecoming lecture, “In the Beginning... The
St. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
�2,8
{Homecoming}
''Thefreedom to choose the St. John spath
is essential to its success. ”
Charles Nelson (class of 1945)
Genesis of the St. John’s Program, 1937.” Nelson, who worked
closely with hoth men while he was a student, talked about Barr
and Buchanan separately-what type of childhoods and early
education they had-and what brought them together to launch
the New Program in 1937. He also talked about the decisions they
made, such as requiring faculty to teach across the curriculum,
and explained the rationale for such choices. He talked about
their struggles, such as a draining battle to ward off annexation by
the Naval Academy, and their triumphs.
Even as the college gained international attention for its
“radical” methods, Barr and Buchanan did not want the St. John’s
Program “universally copied,” Nelson said. “That would have left
the entering freshman without a significant choice, and the
ThemUSES
to
freedom to choose the St. John’s path is essential to its success,”
Nelson said. “The discipline and commitment required in order to
gain the rewards of the Program presupposes that the path is
freely chosen. In fact, I believe that most alumni would assert that
it must be not only freely chosen, but also pleasurable; otherwise,
it isn’t worth the pain.”
—Rosemary Harty
Homecoming
Seminars, book-signings, and parties are standard fare for
Homecoming in Annapolis. This year, thanks to artist Priscilla
Bender-Shore, class of 1955, there were The Muses, gracing the
Hodson Atrium (home to the Pendulum Pit) in Mellon Hall for
the full weekend. It was an appropriate visual tribute to the
women who in 1951 arrived in Annapolis to end the college’s
days as an all-male institution.
During a Saturday afternoon reception, Bender-Shore
provided insight into The Muses: Dancing at the Edge ofthe
World, which she graciously shared with the Annapolis campus
community. The series comprises several large paintings
depicting classically robed women engaged in graceful dances.
In her presentation, Bender-Shore said she was pleased that
this, her first visit back to St. John’s since graduation, gave her
a chance to share her work.
For Bender-Shore, the human figure, especially the female
form, is a muse. She studied at the Yale School of Art and
Cooper Union before attending St. John’s and earned her
M.F. A. from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She
currently lives and teaches in Santa Barbara.
“Priscilla won the Reader’s Digest award to study in Giverny,
France, and that was when she began to develop the ideas for
the Muse drawings,” notes Emily Kutler, class of 1955, also an
artist. “At a time when everyone was going modern, she stayed
with what she was doing: human figures. Everyone was glad to
hear her speak; she is so articulate and thoughtful.”
Bender-Shore showed through slides of her work how her
time as an artist-in-residence at Monet’s home in Giverny laid a
foundation for the series. 4-
For just a weekend, the Hodson Atrium became an art gallery.
On display was a series of paintings by Priscilla Bender-Shore
(class of Z955).
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
C
�{Homecoming}
Clockwise: At the afternoon picnic. Class
OF 1965 MEMBERS GeRALD ZoLLARS, MiKE
Woolsey, and Vivian Ronay trade stories;
Henry Shyrock (class of 193a) and Roland
Bailey (class of 1935) represented the
“old” program at the Saturday banquet;
Members of the class of 1955 and friends
AT the Kutler home; Two future Johnnies
enjoy Homecoming.
{The College- St. John
s College ■
Winter 2006 }
�30
New Books from
Santa Fe Faculty
{Bibliofile}
skv
,/in a bottle
Sky in a Bottle___________________
by Peter Pesic
MIT Press 2005
t starts with the simplest questionone every parent has heard, and few
have answered satisfactorily: why is
the sky blue? For Santa Fe tutor
Peter Pesic, the question is the first
step in a scientific journey that
starts with Plato and Aristotle and ends, if
it does in fact end, with Pesic. Sky in a
Bottle, the latest in Pesic’s remarkable list
of scientific and philosophic books, chroni
cles the search for an answer to a question
confronted by scientists and philosophers
for centuries. Plato, Leonardo, and Newton
all wrestled with the problem, as did the
understand the first two questions, the
ancient Chinese and Middle Eastern scien
third question becomes “Can we recreate
tists. The color of the sky is intimately
the color of the sky here on Earth? Can we,
connected with one’s view of the structure
in effect, put the sky in a bottle?” Pesic
of the heavens, the properties of fight, the
traces
the various attempts to answer the
functioning of the eye, the composition of
first two questions, taking the reader on a
elements, the nature of air, and man’s rela
tour through the central ideas of chem
tionship to the cosmos. As late as i86a. Sir
istry, optics, and atomic physics.
John Herschel claimed that the color and
In true seminar fashion, rather than
polarization of skylight was one of “the two
show how each thinker improved upon
great standing enigmas of meteorology.”
previous work, the book attempts to eval
The book begins by dissecting the
uate each of the proposed solutions on its
central question into three related ques
own merits, uncovering the scientific and
tions. The first question is “Why does the
cultural assumptions behind each thinker’s
sky have color?” The second is “If the sky
work. “One of the things that struck me
does have color, why is it blue rather than
was how long the question remained totally
some other color?” Once we think we
unresolved. Until almost 1900 people
really didn’t know why the sky was blue.
Many great physicists really barked up the
wrong trees trying to answer the question,”
said Pesic.
Pesic first encountered the question in
another scientist’s work. “I read a few years
ago about a physicist named Smoluchowski
who was working on the problem of trying
to duplicate the color of the sky in a bottle.
The more I learned of his work, the more I
began to wonder if it was possible. Could it
be done?”
Although the inspiration for the book
started with Smoluchowski, Pesic says the
question at the heart of the book has its
roots in his experience at the college.
Z
A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT LED SaNTA Fe TUTOR
Peter Pesic to ponder blue
skies.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter aoo6 }
“When I first came to St. John’s the first
class I taught was freshman lab. We were
studying the atomic theory and the question
“Do atoms exist?” Here I was a physicist
and I had never really asked myself this.
How could you prove atoms exist? I had a
Ph.D. in physics, but the question never
came alive for me until freshman lab. It
occurred to me that many of the things we
take for granted, like the color of the sky,
are, in fact, deep and interesting questions
worthy of reconsidering,” he says.
Sky in a Bottle explores Rayleigh’s scat
tering law and the connections between the
appearance of the sky and Avogodro’s
number. Pesic also discusses the depictions
of the sky in art, the secrets of matter and
light, and even what the sky’s brightness
might tell us about the size and density of
the universe.
For those who prefer to take a more active
role in tracing the conversation about the
sky, the book contains an appendix of 11
important experiments related to light and
color. “Some of the experiments in the book
are simplified versions of the experiments
we do in junior and senior lab. I included
them to see if it was possible to demonstrate
that light is a wave without using elaborate
equipment,” says Pesic.
—John Hartnett,
SF83
Excerpt:
Giotto was among the earhest artists to
paint the sky blue, as in his fresco of
the raising of Lazarus in the Arena
Chapel in Padua (1305-1306). Blue
pigments became much more available
through the use of the mineral azurite.
Yet even in the early part of the
fifteenth century, the secret of mixing
blue pigment was still closely guarded.
Ultramarine was the preferred hue,
made by grinding up lapis lazuli into a
powder, which then could be used as
pigment. It was ruinously expensive, so
rare that it was said to come “from
beyond the seas,” the literal meaning of
ultramarine. This extraordinary blue
long continued to be used for the most
special passages in paintings by Giotto
and later artists, usually reserved for
the robes of the Savior or the Mother of
God. Its expense also meant that only
the master artists would dare use it.
-Peter Pesic, Sky in a Bottle
�{Bibliofile}
Leaving Us to Wonder: An Essay on
THE Questions Science Can’t Ask
by Linda Wiener and Ramsey Eric Ramsey
SUNY Press, 2005
t might seem strange for a
St. John’s tutor to suggest in the
title of her new book that there are
some questions that can’t be asked.
In Leaving Us to Wonder, Santa Fe
tutor Linda Wiener and her
collaborator propose that he who poses a
question just might have already limited
the answer. Consequently, many of today’s
most important questions, when posed by
scientists, are doomed from the start to
limited or inadequate answers.
The book is an interesting collaboration
between a biologist and a philosopher.
Wiener is the biologist; Ramsey is a
philosopher and associate dean of the
Barrett Honors College at Arizona
University West. The two met at a
conference 10 years ago and struck up a
conversation on some of the issues that
had bothered Wiener in graduate school.
Their work explores the meaning of the
scientific worldview and how it plays out in
our everyday lives. Their book investigates
alternatives to what they call “scientism,”
the view that science is the proper and
exclusive realm for thinking about and
answering every question.
One might expect that the impetus
for such a book would come from the
biologist’s critique of the philosopher’s
methods and the philosopher’s objections
to those of the scientist. For Wiener, the
book really began when she was in
graduate school as a scientist and began
to question her own methods. She says,
“I wanted to be a biologist because I
wanted to be out with plants and animals
and living things. But in graduate school,
we treated animals and plants as if they
were purely mechanical and mathematical.
To the extent that science can study them
they are, but I couldn’t find anyone who
wanted to question that view. My
colleagues thought that science was the
way to understand everything. It seemed
to me to be too narrow.”
Although the book warns us about the
dangers of a scientific worldview in
general, Wiener uses a specific examplethe conclusions of evolutionary biologists-to help illustrate the case. Wiener
shows how researchers working in
evolutionary biology have stretched their
Z
conclusions to cover answers to questions
about dating and divorce, relationships,
childrearing, and the complex relations
between the sexes-questions that cannot
be answered from a scientific view alone.
But the blame for this worldview is not
limited to the scientists. At stake is the
commonly held idea that a question is not
properly answered until it has been
answered by scientists. Our modern
Leaving Us to Wonder
“My colleagues thought
that science was the
way to understand
everything. ”
Linda Weiner
popular worldview includes the erroneous
assumption that the only real and true
knowledge is the knowledge gained
using the scientific method. The book
challenges this worldview by asking
probing questions about modern inquiry.
Do the facts procured by technoscientific
systems render inconsequential our lived
experiences, the wisdom of ancient and
contemporary philosophic insight, and
the promise offered by time-honored
religious beliefs?
Drawing on authors from the Program,
including Socrates, Darwin, Nietzsche,
{The College.
5t. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
31
Kant, Heidegger, and others, Wiener and
Ramsey demonstrate how many of the
claims and conclusions of technoscience
can and should be challenged. They offer
ways of thinking about science in a larger
context that respect scientific practice,
while taking seriously alternative
philosophies whose aims are freedom, the
good life, or living well. For Wiener, many
of these ways of thinking were first
suggested by her experience at the college.
“Being a tutor here allowed me to see how
others have thought about the facts of
biology in different ways. In the Program
we see how Aristotle and Goethe and
Nietzsche are looking at some of the same
things as scientists, but with a different
approach. Those approaches allow you to
see new things that the modern scientific
paradigm doesn’t reveal,” she says.
As one might expect from a collabora
tion between a philosopher and a
biologist, the book is respectful of the
power of scientific thinking. Wiener is
not proposing that purely meditative
thinking, to borrow a term from
Heidegger, should supplant and replace
the calculative thinking of the scientific
method. Instead, she carefully presents
the idea that both kinds of thinking have a
role to play in getting at the truth-neither
has a monopoly on metaphysical reality or
objective truth. Calculative thinking
might propose that humans are
fundamentally collections of DNA and
should be viewed as such. Meditative
thinking might propose that humans are
fundamentally rational creatures who
exercise their will. Neither answer has a
monopoly on the truth, but each ignores
the conclusions of the other at its peril.
The book concentrates on the limits of
scientific thinking only because of its
prevalence in the modern world. Wiener
points out, “If you seek solutions in a
strictly scientific way you don’t tend to get
good solutions. First you have to figure out
what the problem really is. Once you hnd a
solution is needed, then you bring in more
technical knowledge at the end. You don’t
start with science. You end with it.”
—John Hartnett,
SF83
�3a
{Alumni Profile}
A Quest to Preserve Ancient Dance
Joseph Houseal, A84
BY Patricia Dempsey
raveling off-road in the
Himalayan Kingdom of
Bhutan means leaving
behind modern modes
of transportation-even
wheels. “Off-road
means traveling on yak, horse, or
foot” through windswept mountain
passes and isolated valleys, says
Joseph Houseal (A84). A gifted athlete
who once held the half-mile track
record in Michigan and was a profes
sional dancer, Houseal says that even
he gets weary traveling this rugged
terrain on his quest to find sacred
rituals and dance festivals. He travels
in Bhutan for up to seven months at a
time as part of a five-year project to
document Bhutan’s ancient dance
forms before they are lost to modern
culture.
When Houseal is in Bhutan-some
7,600 miles from his home in
Chicago-he is closer than ever to the
rural roots of his youth in St. Joseph,
Michigan, where his father is a blue
funded by the Core of Culture and the
berry farmer. The Bhutanese, a majority
Honolulu Academy of the Arts, will become
ofwhom practice Tantric Buddhism,
part of a traveling exhibition, “The Arts
recognize in Houseal a fellow farmer, a man
of Bhutan,” which will appear in several
on “a divine mission,” says Houseal.
U.S. cities, and in Europe and Asia before
“Everything in my life has come together
finding a permanent home in the New York
into this work of dancers preserving dance,” PubUc Library’s Performing Arts Dance
he says. “I am alive because I have this
Collection.
purpose.”
Landlocked in the eastern Himalayas,
Over the decades that he has devoted
between China and India, the Kingdom of
himself to dance, Houseal has attained the
Bhutan is an isolated sanctuary of nature
Eastern ideal of integrating body, mind, and and ancient culture, where dance is
spirit. He trained rigorously for his first
integrated into every aspect of life. The
career in professional ballet companies such
Bhutanese practice monastic dances, lay
as the Washington Ballet, made his choreo
religious dances, masked dances, and other
graphic debut on the Quad at St. John’s with sacred dance rituals. Dance is a form of
Aeschylus’ Choephori. He later moved to
meditation, communication, and informa
Kyoto to study the ancient Japanese Noh
tion. “Dance in Bhutan is not the same
Theater and there formed a dance company
thing as it is here in the states. We have one
that attracted critical acclaim. Today, as
word for dance. In Bhutan, they have over
executive director of the Chicago-based
20 words for dance,” says Houseal. Dance in
Core of Culture, Houseal leads a project to
Bhutan is also endangered, as centuries-old
videotape and preserve the dances of
forms of feudalism meet the 21st century.
Bhutan, In 2008 this ethnographic record.
“Today the Bhutanese are on the brink of
T
{The College
Sf. John's College ■
IVinter 2006 }
Joseph Houseal, posed for a Nihon
Buyo portrait. NihonBuyo is an
ANCIENT form of TRADITIONAL
Japanese dance.
creating a generation that will have
young people who cannot dance,”
says Houseal.
In Bhutan, Houseal travels ancient
mountain paths with his British
associate, Gerard Houghton, and
Bhutanese film director Karma
Tshering, who speaks 14 of the 22
Bhutanese languages. Last spring,
for instance, they had three months
to shoot 125 hours of film, but it took
up to five days each way trekking off
road to reach each of the six festivals
they recorded. A festival can last up
to five days, and dances last all day.
“It can take a lifetime for a deep spir
itual transformation, linked closely
to Tantric Buddhism, to take place,”
says Houseal.
Houseal’s journeys often lead him
to encounters with the mysterious and
mystical. In one such encounter he saw
exactly what is endangered in Bhutan. “We
met a monk named Lopon Sangay. He has
been a monk since he was eightyears old.
When we met him, he had been awake for
16 days, dancing five-and-a-half hours a day
in an elaborate three-week ritual. He
couldn’t understand why we thought that
was amazing. In his mind he was simply
acting out the Dharma, his practice as a
monk-this is a way of life in Bhutan,
dancing as a practice. And it is these
internal teachings that are endangered,”
says Houseal. “Movement can be preserved
and taped, but the internal teachings
training the body and the mind, the organs,
using visualization, projectory movement,
and energy awareness-cannot. When
Lopon dances, his body, mind, and spirit
are transformed.”
The audience or observer is also trans
formed. “It is a fusion of mind, body, and
spirit that leaves a karmic, compassionate
�{Alumni Profile}
imprint on the audience,” says Houseal,
“In Bhutan, you don’t applaud after a dance
is performed; you absorb the energy-so you
can’t help but be transformed and take
something away from it with you.”
The ambitious scope of Houseal’s work in
Bhutan is characteristic of someone with his
perseverance, passion-and, he admits, luck.
Growing up in rural Michigan, with eight
siblings, Houseal had little time or money
for dance. As karma would have it, a
92-year-old ballet teacher, classically trained
by Russian immigrants, lived within driving
distance. “She taught me the total art of
ballet: character, music, plot, costumes,”
says Houseal. After high school, he success
fully auditioned for the School of the Wash
ington Ballet and began as a scholarship
student. Then in the late 1970s, the touring
New York City Ballet needed performers to
dance as extras in Coppelia. with Barysh
nikov in the lead; Houseal was chosen from
among hundreds who auditioned. “I saw
how Baryshnikov lived and worked-in the
dressing room, with the press, dancing the
ballet-but I didn’t see myself living his life.”
Houseal, the valedictorian of his high
school class, wanted intellectual fulfillment,
so he left the world of dance for St. John’swhere he also learned to take himself seri
ously as a dancer. “I was trained as a
performer, but my tutors, especially
Chaninah Maschler, got me to explore the
profundity of being a dancer,” Houseal
recalls. “This was my first serious probe for
four years into the question: ‘What is the
nature of dance?’ ” Houseal also discovered
what has become a lifelong love of ancient
dance. He took 600 lines of ancient Greek
and choreographed a dance to be performed
on the Quad. “The Greek plays were meant
to be spectacles, meant to have a civic
purpose, a theatrical purpose. Where else
can you recreate such a spectacle but at
St. John’s?”
In Annapolis Houseal was also influenced
by Barry Talley, then musical director at the
Naval Academy, for whom he worked as a
choreographer. Houseal learned how to
reconstruct baroque operas, ballets,
colonial dances, and ballad operas. And it
was Houseal’s friend at St. John’s, Grady
Harris (A84), who introduced Houseal to
ancient theater forms and gave Houseal
translated Noh plays to read. Houseal was
also influenced by Francis Mason, Jr. (A43),
editor of The Ballet Review, who encour
aged him to “go to the source and find out
what dancers are teaching.”
Inspired by ancient dance of Greece and
drawn to an Eastern sensibility, Houseal
moved to Kyoto after graduation to study
Noh Theater under Master Matsui Akira.
Houseal later formed the Parnassus
Dancetheatre, which showcased dancers
from all over the world performing
Houseal’s avante garde choreography.
During the seven years he lived in Kyoto,
Houseal watched the city evolve into a
cultural Mecca. But by the early ’90s, the
cultural renaissance in Kyoto was devastated
by the city’s economic downturn and AIDS.
Houseal, a fortunate survivor of the disease,
pursued his life’s work with renewed passion
and studied for a graduate degree at the
Laban Center for Movement and Dance
in London.
He returned to Chicago, where he says he
33
found the “bald eagerness for money offputting,” While meditating one day in his
lakefront apartment, Houseal spotted a
monk walking by on the beach and invited
him in for tea. The monk told him to go to
Ladakh, a region in the Himalayas. Soon
Houseal found himself at a monastery in
Ladakh, where he was “transformed to
accept Fate’s call and recognized the need to
preserve ancient dance.”
As Houseal considers the transformations
in his life-from a farming youth to
professional dancer, from a college student
to choreographer, and now as a dance
preservationist, he observes that it can take
30 years of meditation and practice in
Bhutan to become a monk. “I look at myself
and see how it took only four years at
St. John’s to cultivate what has become a
deep part of my being,” he says. “At
St. John’s I developed my mind after I had
already trained my body. And look where it
took me-to the source, the Himalayaswhere I can reach my life’s purpose.”
For more information on the Core of
Culture’s dancepreservation project in
Bhutan, visit: www.coreofculture.org.
Top: Houseal in Kumasaka, a Japanese Noh
PERFORMANCE, AT KlI TeMPLE. HoUSEAL SAYS
HE WAS THE ONLY FOREIGNER IN 8OO YEARS TO
BE ALLOWED TO PERFORM NoH AT THE TEMPLE.
Left: Bhutanese
farmers, who are also lay
MONKS, REHEARSE A TRADITIONAL DANCE IN
THE VILLAGE OF UrA.
{The College. 5t. John’s College . Winter 2006 }
�34
{Alumni Notes}
1942
Ernest J. Heinmuller
writes, “Having moved from
St. Michaels, Md., I am now in
Easton, Md., recently
appointed to the Emergency
Medical Treatment
Committee.”
Adventures in the Orient
-OAN E. Cole (class of 1957) has been seeing the world
since her retirement from the New York Public Library
System and just returned from a trip to Japan and China.
“Seeing the evidence of their long pasts puts our past
in greater perspective. The U.S. is just a baby that can
and should learn from the ‘elders.’ Museum visits,
temples, and a performance of acrobats made it a most
memorable trip.”
J
Lee Mace is enjoying
retirement life at Leisure
World in Silver Spring, Md.
“Indulging myself with
travel-mostly cruises! ”
1948
“I became a great-grandfather,
doubly, with George Klimov
born October 5, aoo4, and
Shawn Trimble, born October
13,2004,” writes George R.
Trimhle, Jr.
1964
Attention, any Johnnies living
in England: Patricia Carney
would be glad to organize a
seminar for college alumni
living in the U.K. “I am in
Cambridge. Suggested
reading: Omerus by Derek
Walcott.”
1969
Andrew Garrison (A) writes:
1962
“Our son Jesse is in his third
year at Oberlin, studying
metaphysics and documentary
filmmaking.”
Michael Elias is set to direct
his adaptation of the Anthony
Burgess novel A Dead Man
in Deptford on the life of
Christopher Marlowe. Michael
is living in West Los Angeles
with his 13-year-old son, Fred,
1970
Les Margulies (A) has been
living in Kiev, Ukraine, for
almost a year. “I am Chief
Operating Officer of a group of
companies in the advertising
area (The Atlantic Groupwww.agl-media.com).
“Kiev is nothing like you
would think. It is not grey,
Soviet, and depressing. It looks
like a combination of Vienna,
Paris, and Prague. There are
not too many ex-patriots over
here (excluding government,
probably less than 1,000, so
that makes me a bit of a big fish
in a small pond). I love living in
Europe and can’t imagine why I
had not moved years before
when various opportunities
presented themselves. I do miss
certain foods, such as peanut
butter. Wheat Thins, and corn
muffins. But on the other hand,
excellent vodka is $3.5o/liter
and that more than makes up
for the other bits lacking.
“Living is much more expen
sive than you would think.
With the exception of vice
products (local beer, wine,
vodka, and cigarettes (50 cents
a pack), everything is the same
price or more as in the States.
Decent wine at a bar is
$io/glass.
“Intellectually the work is
very challenging and fun. Even
though most of my friends and
I am sure my fellow classmates
are retired to warm climates
somewhere, I am still going
strong. I may not remember the
details of Plato’s Republic, but I
sure remember my first mixer
at Chase Hall.”
{The College -5f. John’s College - Winter 2006 }
1972
Ilene Lee (A) celebrated her
birthday this year with an
early-morning ascent to the
top of Mount Tam in Marin
County, Calif. She writes:
“Wow-what a view!”
1973
Sheila Bobbs Armstrong
(SF, SFGI95, EC93), had an
intellectually stimulating
summer. “I just did the
Summer Classics: Nietzsche,
three comedies, and Sri
Aurobindo. I needed to kick
start my brain. My eldest son,
Ian, is a junior at St. John’s,
and my son Gamon is a senior
at Occidental College in L.A.
My third son, Quinn, is a high
school senior at Idyllwild Arts
Academy in L.A. Mike and I
are still in Santa Fe, Perth,
and traveling. I still teach
occasionally.”
Dr. Mary Batteen (A) was
made a full professor at the
Naval Postgraduate School in
July. She is the chair of the
Oceanography Department
there and regularly teaches
graduate courses in physical
oceanography and advises M.S.
and Ph.D. students. She was
recently interviewed for a
book. Careers in Focus, which
was published in 2004. She has
two children: Matthew, 13, and
Elizabeth, 8. Her husband,
Tim Stanton, is a field
oceanographer who has
traveled to the North Pole,
Antarctica, and Brazil, all
this year.
�{AlumniNotes}
Bursting with parental pride,
Jon T. Ferrier (A) writes,
“Our daughter, Valerie, is
halfway through law school at
St. John’s University in New
York, and Kayne and I are on
the L.S.D.-the Law School
Diet-for the next couple of
years-just in time for our 35th
class reunion! Pride abounds,
and our hearts soar, like the
eagle.”
1976
Richard Bradley Bonds (SF)
is a nursing student.
“Things have heen a little quiet
since St. John’s and law
school,” writes William W.
Campbell (A). “In 3004,1 got
the Honorary Young Farmer
Award from Pennsylvania
Young Farmers for ‘support of
adult farmer education in
Pennsylvania.’ Now that is
excitement!”
1979
Susan Herder (SF) loves
living in San Francisco and
working as a self-employed
neuro-muscular therapist: “I
have more free time now, as I
completed a pre-med program
at San Francisco State
University last year. (What a
trip, to have come t8o degrees
from shunning the sciences!)
I do a lot of sports-I’ll run my
first marathon (in the wine
country in France!) in
September, and regularly swim
in the bay. I think about my
classmates often and send you
all the best.”
1981
Marilynn Smith (SFGI)
reports that her move from
California to Texas went
smoothly last summer. “Living
near my daughter and her
family (including three
grandchildren) is priceless,”
she adds.
Edelman, born on May 36.
I can be contacted at
edelman3@stanf0rd.edu.”
Margaret Graham (SF) is still
living in Boulder, Go., with her
husband, three kids, one dog,
two budgies, and ii chickens.
She recently began taking
prerequisites for nursing
school, but notes there is a
three-year waiting list to get in.
1984
Peter Green (A) just started a
new job as deputy business
editor at The New York Post.
He often runs into Robert
George (A85), who writes
editorials for the Post. Catch
up with him on his work
e-mail: pgreen@nypost.com
News from Barry and Cynthia
Hellman (A): Thia Keppel
Hellman is one of the Hampton
University leaders organizing
the effort to build a state-ofthe-art proton radiation
therapy center in Hampton,
35
Va. The project will cost
approximately $180 million
and take several years to
complete. The certificate of
public need (COPN) was
awarded recently.
Fr. Robert Nicoletti (SF)
was apologetic about not
sending in his Alumni
Association dues this year, but
he has good reason, he notes:
“As a missionary with two
orphanages and a soup kitchen
(300 people a day), I need to
find funds.” He asked
St. John’s alumni to consider
supporting “these very human
itarian activities in the
Ukraine. Many thanks and
prayers.”
1987
John Sellers (A) is “married
to Becky Woods, teaching
grades 8-r3 math and science,
including chemistry and
physics. Challenging!”
continued onp.
1977
David Pex (SF) got married
August 14, 3005. “Complete
with instant family! Ages 4, 6,
and 8!”
1983
Jonathan ANroNio Edelman
Carla Schick (A) is still
writing. “I will he published in
a small independent journal
called Defect Cult. Other
poems have been published in
the Peralta Press and Word is
Bond.^"
(A) returned to graduate
school after 30 years in the film
industry. “I am working
towards a master’s degree at
Stanford University in the
Joint Program in Design
(mechanical engineering and
art). My wife, Annie, and I are
very happy parents of a new
baby boy, Liam Elijah Talbot
Honoring Excellence
“IM Sawatzki (AGI91) a teacher at Bethel High School in
Spanaway, Wash., has been named Washington History
Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of
The History Teacher of the Year Award honors one excep
American History and Preserve America. He received a
tional K-13 teacher of American history from each state and U.S.
$1,000 honorarium, and a core archive of history books
territory;
is was
based
on criteria
including
experience in
andselection
materials
donated
to his
school library.
teaching American history for at least three years; a deep career
commitment to teaching American history; evidence of
creativity and imagination in the classroom; and close attention
to documents, artifacts, historic sites, and the other primary
materials of history.
J
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�36
{Alumni Profile}
Logos in Action
David Veazey, Ayr
BY Rosemary Harty
man who uses the power
HIV hysteria must first be eradicated.”
of rational speech
The writing he does now is much
unjustly can do great
different from the approach he took when
harm, Aristotle writes in
he sat down to pen his senior essay on
Rhetoric. David Veazey
Plato’s Sophist. “St. John’s requires a
(A97) does just the
different sort of writing that I never use in
opposite; he employs carefullythe
chosen
outside world-that is, asking a lot of
words, solid evidence, and a well-crafted
questions and not necessarily coming to
argument to save lives by helping to fight
any conclusion compared to thesis
the spread of HIV/AIDS in Russia, where
argument-conclusion that the rest of the
the government has downplayed the risk
world is used to,” he explains.
while new cases rise at an alarming rate.
Veazey developed persuasive writing
Veazey lives in Moscow, where he works
skills on his own, noting that four years
as a grant proposal writer for AIDS
of the Socratic method prepared him well
Foundation East-West (AFEW), a Dutch
for the work he does today. “When I am
non-governmental humanitarian public
working on grant proposals I try to act as
health organization that seeks to reduce
sort of a Socratic midwife. I’m not an
the impact of HIV/AIDS in Eastern
expert on any particular AIDS issue,
Europe and Central Asia. The job taps two but I try to ask the experts questions that
of his best attributes: he’s passionate
will help them come up with a good
about making a difference in the world
project that will be interesting to a donor.
and skilled at drawing together informa
This approach has St. John’s written all
tion from many sources and assembling a
over it.”
persuasive argument.
Consider Veazey’s
editorial in the Kiev
Post, which sought to
meet the “rising
hysteria” about
HIV/AIDS in the
Ukraine tvith clear and
dispassionate logic.
He pointed out that
the stigma associated
with the disease
discourages people
from being tested,
tackled prevailing
myths about how HIV
is spread, and asked
ordinary citizens to
educate themselves
and get involved in the
fight against the
disease. “In order to
seriously address the
HIV/AIDS epidemic
in Ukraine,” he
concluded, “the
epidemic of fear and
A
Veazey’s route to Russia began at
Fordham University in New York, where
he was attending graduate school in
economics and working part time and
during summer breaks for Doctors
Without Borders. He worked as a
grant writer, then as a researcher for the
international humanitarian organization’s
access-to-medicines campaign. Ulti
mately, the work steered him away from
economics.
“I became very interested in how the
pharmaceutical industry worked and how
it affected drug development for tropical
diseases,” Veazey says. “I wanted to tie it
to my economics studies in industrial
organization somehow. I came up with
several good thesis topics but the problem
was finding the data to work with. All of
my classmates were working on very
esoteric topics with little relevance to
people’s lives. This was mainly because
the availability of data largely determines
the topic. So I
became more
convinced that
economics is
inherently unable
to answer any
meaningful ques
tions. . . I couldn’t
see myself doing it
as a career because
of that.”
When the
September ii
terrorist attacks
sent the city of
{The College. St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
continued onp. gr
Life in Russia is
ALWAYS INTER
ESTING, SAYS David
Veazey,
here with
HIS WIFE, Elena
Rudych, in Voloko
lamsk, A SMALL
TOWN TWO hours
from
Moscow.
�{Alumni Profile}
continued
New York into an economic downturn,
Veazey’s position at Doctors Without
Borders came to an end, and he couldn’t
find work anywhere-even part time.
Veazey decided that the time was right to
visit a friend in Moscow, where he could
explore the job market.
It was a risky move, primarily because
English is not widely spoken in the city,
and Veazey spoke no Russian. At first he
patched together freelance work writing
for magazines and newspapers for the
U.S. expatriate community. That led to a
job working for the Russian news agency
Prime-Tass. Veazey’s language skills
improved and he learned to edit “really,
really fast,” but the job paid very little.
Then he spotted an advertisement for a
position with Aids Foundation East-West,
“jumped on it, and got it.” His title is
senior adviser on proposal development;
in other words, bringing in money. He’s
been at it for three years now, and his
work is driven by urgency.
The AIDS epidemic is still new to the
former Soviet Union, he says. According
to UNAIDS, 860,000 people in Russia
have HIV/AIDS, the majority of whom
are drug users who contracted the virus
from contaminated needles. The outbreak
may be much higher than reported by the
government, says Veazey. Many more
people may not be aware they have HIV.
“The estimates vary widely because
there isn’t any good data available. Some
estimates are higher than a million. In the
highest HIV-prevalence areas like Irkutsk
and Samara, more than i percent of the
population is estimated to be HIV
positive. Once it goes beyond i percent,
the epidemic can easily become selfsustaining,” he says.
East-West sponsors projects supporting
local organizations that work with
injecting drug users, a method called
“harm reduction,” says Veazey. “The
ultimate goal is to get them not to use
drugs, but in the meantime, they can use
clean needles.”
Another foundation project seeks to
prevent the spread of HIV in prisons;
inmates have been trained as outreach
workers, medical professionals and
psychologists were trained on preand post-HIV test counseling, and
disciplinary and custodial staff received
training on reducing risk in the work
place.
Until about five years ago, the Russian
government was not aggressively involved
with the spread of AIDS, Veazey says.
“Politicians had been talking about
increasing border security because they
think the disease comes from abroad,”
Veazey says.
The government became more active
after Veazey’s organization and four
others attracted grant funding from the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis,
and Malaria, an international fund with
$7.a billion in pledges to fight three
deadly epidemics. The Russian govern
ment donated $20 million to the fund,
''When lam working
on grantproposals
I try to act as sort ofa
Socratic midwife. ”
David Veazey, A97
but did not apply for any grants itself.
“In 2003 AFEW and the four other
organizations applied for and won
$89 million in grants over five year for
HIV prevention,” says Veazey, who was
the lead writer. “This caused some
embarrassment among proud Russian
officials. There were a lot of behind-thescenes discussions about whether they
were going to allow us to go forward or
not. One faction of the government even
put together its own proposal at the last
minute to try to sabotage ours. But in the
end, we prevailed.”
The following year, the government
submitted its own successful proposal to
the Global Fund for a similar amount, but
focusing on HIV treatment, Veazey adds.
“Now things are starting to change.
President Putin announced in a speech
recently that he was ordering the
government to increase its budget for
AIDS by 20 times. Of course, we have to
see what they actually do with this money,
but the environment is sharply different
from a few years ago,” he says.
A favorite aspect of his job is writing
editorials and getting them published in
{The College
.Sf. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
37
newspapers such as the Kiev Post. Once,
he criticized the European Union for not
taking a big enough role in prevention;
another time he admonished the
U.S. government for advocating
abstinence-only programs. The U.S.
“essentially enforces abstinence because
they offer a lot of money and people
normally don’t refuse.”
Life in Moscow can be hectic. A native
of Chattanooga, Tenn., Veazey has never
grown used to living among so many
people: “At 12 million people, Moscow is
much bigger than New York. There are a
lot of high rises, and the city has a kind of
a grim exterior. There are a lot of reasons
to be grim, because there’s so much
poverty here.
Then there are the challenges of
everyday life in a city where some modern
conveniences have not quite caught on.
Says Veazey, “the most annoying thing for
a Westerner are small food shops called
producty. You walk in and there are about
four different counters for different kinds
of goods and you have to ask each person
for what you want, they weigh it and tell
you how much it costs, you go back to the
cashier and pay for it, you bring your
receipt back, and you can get whatever
you bought. Then, you have to do it over
again at the other counters.”
Life in Moscow improved dramatically
for Veazey in 2003, when he married
Elena Rudykh, who works as an assistant
network administrator. Elena’s family
lives in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, and
Veazey loves visiting the region. “Once
you get outside the city, the countryside is
beautiful, especially in winter, with birch
trees and snow,” he says.
His favorite thing about Russia is the
character of the people: good-natured in
spite of a hard life, resilient, friendly-and
devoted readers of great literature.
“Everyone here has read Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky. It’s pretty amazing,” he says.
Veazey and his wife are starting to think
about moving back to the U.S., where
Veazey would like to attend law school.
He’s still interested in advocacy. “I think
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not
going to save the world,” Veazey says. “It
just feels good doing this kind of work,
and I want to continue doing it.”
�{AlumniNotes}
38
Josephine Lucia DiggsGalligan on July 20, 2005, in
Washington, D.C. Big sister
Sophia Emmanuelle is enjoying
her new status immensely.”
Senegal Bound
(SFoi) has been busy:
“After leaving Santa Fe, I went back to school at
the University of Maryland, where I completed a
B.S. in Soil Science. I then worked for two years
Anne Schuchman (A) and Jim
as a carpenter’s apprentice/site manager for
Berrettini (AGI93) joyfully
Blakketter Craftsmen (whose newest employee is
Anne Neadham, Aoi.) I also took time off to volunteerannounce
with Red the birth of Augus
Feather Development Group, building strawbale homes
onJames, August 22, 2005.
tine
Indian Reservations (Hopi and Chippewa). I’m now on my way
Gus joins Samuel (6) and Stella
to Senegal as a Sustainable Agriculture Extension Agent with
(3). Jim is a manager at Time,
the Peace Corps. If anyone will be traveling through, they
Inc. Anne received her Ph.D. in
should see me (for the next two years).”
Italian Studies from New York
University in 2004 and is an
adjunct professor at NYU and a
research affiliate with the
University of Michigan. “We’re
living in Rutherford, N.J., have
started homeschooling, and
would love to get in touch with
Laurie Cooper (A) and Don
Graham Harman (A) reports
other Johnny homeschoolers
Kugelmass were waiting the
that his book Guerilla
(ams8050@nyu.edu or
arrival of their third child,
Metaphysics was published in
jpb@alum.mit.edu).”
expected this January. Laurie
August by Open Court. He is
continues to practice
still teaching at the American
psychotherapy in a community
University in Cairo, Egypt.
mental health clinic.
llison Anne Arnold
A
1988
1990
Clinton Pittner (SF) “got
1989
Beverly J. Angel (SFGI) is
now practicing intellectual
property law with the firm
D. McDaniel LLP.
divorced, but took a cross
country motorcycle trip from
Alabama to California (6,500
miles round trip), which was
nice. Found out there’s a K-ia
school that has a program
[similar to St. John’s], and even
has two Johnnies as teachers!”
Ken Turnbull (A) writes,
Lee Carpenter (A) is busy
completing a law degree at the
University of Maryland School
of Law; he expects to graduate
in May aoo6.
“My wife, Leslie, and I
continue to be astounded and
delighted by our i6-month-old
daughter, Fiona.”
1991
Teddi Ann Galligan and
David Alan Diggs (both AGI)
“announce with great joy the
birth of their second daughter.
1992
Elyette Block Kirby (SF)
writes, “I am living half an
hour south of Paris with my
husband and three children,
Benjamin, 4; Bronwyn, 3; and
Luca, I. I’m always looking to
meet other Johnnies living in
the area...or traveling
through.”
1993
Valerie Dufe-Strautmann
(SF) gave birth last August
to Northanna Mildred
Strautmann. She and her
husband, Jake Strautmann, live
in Watertown, Mass. You can
{The College -St John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
drop her a note by e-mail:
vsd_str@yahoo. com
1994
Bill Kowalski (SF) and his
wife, Alexandra Nedergaard,
are proud to announce the
birth of their second child,
Chloe Sophia Kowalski, on
December 6. “On the very
same day, the paperhack
edition of my fourth novel.
The Good-Neighbor (Harper
Collins), arrived on my
doorstep, reminding me that
December i was the official
release date. This edition
includes a P.S. section,
comprised of an essay, an inter
view, and a recommended
reading list, all by yours truly.
The essay is about St. John’s.
It’s written for people who
have never heard of us, and it
gives a very general overview of
the Program, so it won’t
contain anything particularly
new or enlightening for John
nies. But I hope it helps bring
SJC some more of the national
exposure it so richly deserves
(and international as well-the
hook will be translated into
German and Swedish).”
Colin and Emily Ray (both A)
have big news: “Our daughter,
Marina Claire, was horn on
December 2, 2004. We just
moved into our new house in
Tokyo. We’d enjoy having a
Johnnie visit us!”
�{Alumni Notes}
39
Fair Play
Shana Hack (Ag^) Loves Toys
wi Rosemary Harty
ince graduating from St.
John’s College, Shana
Hack (A95) has heen
selling toys for a living,
primarily in various stores
around Santa Fe. When
the time came to make some deci
sions about her future. Hack decided
that she was happy selling toys. “I just
realized I wanted my own toys,” she
says.
Hack was sorry to miss what would
have been her loth reunion last
September, but she had just opened
Moon Rabbit Toys, a block from the
Plaza on Guadalupe Street in Santa
Fe. It’s a family enterprise. Hack’s
husband, Scott Cox, a carpenter, built
shelves for the store. Her mother,
Karen, became her first employee.
From the beginning. Hack was out to
create an extraordinary toy store, one
that reflected her own values. Only
two toys in her store require batteries.
Most toys are made from natural
wood, and Hack scours catalogs and Web
sites to find toys produced under fair labor
conditions.
“I found some amazing companies in
Thailand that make toys of renewable wood
and that follow European Union labor stan
dards. I buy a lot of toys made in the U.S.,
and some wonderful board games made in
Germany. If I buy something from China,
it’s because it’s a really decent toy. Where
else are you going to get rubber chickens
and Ruble’s Cubes?”
Shana Hack, with
Rabbit Toys.
S
Don’t look for an Xbox or Game Boy in
Hack’s store. “I love simple toys,” she says.
“Take out a yo-yo and learn a trick. Who
doesn’t love a Slinky? And Frisbeesthey’re just brilliantly designed.”
Parents who remember how much fun it
was to play with a Jiberwheel-a hand-held
toy with a gyroscope-are buying them for
their kids, but playing with them instead.
Another popular toy is the goofy drinking
bird, which provides a physics lesson every
time he leans over to drink.
1995
M. Louise Heydt (SFGI)
writes that her first book.
Divine Rainbow, Nature as a
Spiritual Teacher, was
published in July 3005. It is for
sale at the St. John’s bookstore
in Santa Fe.
1996
“Hello Johnnies,” writes
Gwendolynne Barr (SFGI).
“What do you think-evolution
and/or intelligent design?
Experiment today by stirring
up the gene pool of the
Northern California Alumni
Association: www.teamrioja.org/
sjcaanc/index.html. We hold
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter H006 }
Moon
Hack’s stock of board games has
already attracted Johnnies who enjoy
strategic games. “There’s the ‘Settlers
of Catan,’ all about trading and
developing cities; ‘Carcasonne,’
which involves building a map; and
‘Hector and Achilles’-how could I
resist that?”
When she’s a little better estab
lished, Hack would like to start a
game night for Johnnies. Bringing
students into the store would give her
someone with whom she can discuss
her favorite books: Herodotus’ HistorfcA-which she keeps in her store to
peruse at leisure-and Moby-Dick.
With just a little advertising and a
good location. Moon Rabbit Toys has
already attracted a good base of
parents, tourists, and children of all
ages. The downside is that she’s been
known to work a month without a day offa small price to pay for the rewards of
running her own show and being able to
play with toys. “I’ve been dreaming about
this for four years, planning it for two,
and now I get to wake up every day and
say, ‘I own my own toy shop-how cool is
that?’ ” ♦
Tracy Christine Whitcomh
(A) writes, “One more year of
nursing coursework and I’ll be
an RN-BSN! I spent a semester
in Perth, Australia, and
enjoyed riding camels as well
as removing staple stitches.
I’m still in Vermont. Anyone
coming up to Burlington,
feel free to look me up at tracywhitcomb1973@hotmail.com.
Cheers!”
friends, at
seminars throughout the year,
as well as an annual symposium
at Stag’s Leap winery in Napa.
Good times, great (and other
wise) books.”
�{AlumniNotes}
40
1997
Jenn Coonce (A) works for
WcightWatchers.com and is
getting an M.A. in modern
psychoanalysis at the Boston
Graduate School for
Psychoanalysis in New York.
Casey McFaden (AGI) recently
accepted a position at Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Haver, and
Feld, LLP in Washington D.C.,
with a focus on the federal
regulation of electric utilities.
he writes. “I have asked David
Reber (AGI) to be a consultant
with our math curriculum, and
if possible, to teach part time.
The other six members of our
development team are not
Johnnies; however, they are
aware of and support our great
books approach. Most of them
have attended at least one
Touchstones workshop, and we
expect to be asking for
additional help from the
Touchstones program as well
as the great books program
once we have a contract and
start hiring additional
personnel. We are constantly
running into problems with
our Milwaukee Public Schools
administrators who don’t
understand why we don’t want
to operate the same as all the
other schools.”
1999
Mike and Arby Soejoto (both
A) are proud to announce the
birth of their son, John
Anthony, on July 10. Their
daughter, Lucy, turned 2 last
fall. The Soejotos live in
Los Angeles, where Mike is an
attorney, and Abby is a stay-athome mom. They’d love to
hear from any friends at
msoejoto@pircher.com or
asoejoto@sbcglobaLnet.
John Cowherd (A) writes,
“I took a month off and now
I’m back working at the same
place and waiting to get my
Virginia bar exam results in a
few weeks.”
2000
Paul E. Tanner (AGI) recently
William Conway (A) is living
accepted the Erickson
Research Fellowship in
Educational Policy at Michigan
State University.
in Philadelphia, working at
Saint Joseph’s University in
administration. “I’m studying
towards an MBA and am
available to talk to students
and alums about business
school and working in higher
ed administration:
wconway@sju.edu.”
Out of the Loop?
1998
Chris Jones (SF) writes that
Stephen Conn (SF) is happy to
all is “well in Tennessee. I’m
practicing pastoral counseling,
art, and Isha yoga. I miss
St. John’s and friends there, so
I hope to hear from some at
kierkegaardvark@yahoo.com.”
announce that one of his
comic-strip series, “The
Radioactive Rahbi,” has heen
picked up hy the Newport, R.L,
free weekly, the Mercury
(WWW. newportmercury. com).
He would also like to
shamelessly plug his Sgt.
Pepper/Great Books Authors
T-shirt, available in both
campus bookstores. He writes,
“Best to all the ’97/’98ers!”
Glen Scott Cooper (AGI) is
involved with an exciting new
endeavor. “We are opening a
new public charter school Aug.
I, aoo6-Downtown Institute of
Arts and Letters, a great books
high school that is part of the
small schools initiative of
Milwaukee Public Schools,”
Catch up on all the latest news. Join the St. John’s College
Alumni Online Community. Here, you can let friends know where
TO find you, discover what former classmates are up to, share
“For the next eight months, I
will be sailing as the director of
Resource Development on the
Voyage of Makulu,” writes
Todd Wilson (SFGI). “We will
sail from Australia to Italy,
teaching New York City public
school students world
geography along the way.
You can track the voyage at the
organization’s Web site:
www.reachtheworld.org.”
PHOTO galleries AND BLOGS, KEEP UP WITH ALUMNI EVENTS AND
COLLEGE NEWS, AND CONNECT WITH OTHER ALUMNI WORKING IN YOUR
FIELD. From the St. John’s home page (www.stjohnscollege.edu),
CLICK ON ‘‘For Alumni” and follow the directions from there.
continued on pg. 42
{The College- St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Alumni Profile}
A Sweet Deal
PaulLaur (SFGIg^) Pursues a Values-CenteredEnterprise
BY Erica Naone (A05)
" hen he drove up
to Denver
recently to pour
cider samples at
a new chain
grocery story,
Paul Laur (SFGI95) took his 7-year-old
son Gavin along. As president of Santa
Fe Cider Company, Laur manages his
business with Gavin and Nathaniel (4)
in mind-involving them in the world
of work while enjoying the time he
spends with them.
“My sons go with me to pick the
apples or to drive the truck to the
press,” he says, “and that’s part of
what makes the job fun.”
The manager of the grocery store
had other ideas and told Laur it was
unprofessional to have his son
with him on the job. True to the
marketplace and with the community in
philosophical tendencies that brought him
which we live.”
to St. John’s, Laur went home and thought
Laur’s background, in fact, is
it over. What emerged was a clear view on
adventurous and far ranging. He began
the role of business in a person’s life,
his college career as a physics major at the
particularly his own.
University of California-Irvine, hoping to
“The manager was talking about
become a theoretical physicist. Sidetracked
corporate ethics-not professionalism at
into a sailor’s life, he found himself, in the
all,” Laur says. “I have a family-run
late 197OS, sailing a boat to Australia with
business. It makes total sense to me to bring three undergraduates from St. John’s in
my family along for the ride. It’s a shame
Annapolis: Steve Scott (A78), Preston Kelly
that corporations have to be so faceless.”
(A8a), and John Fleming (A78). Laur had
Laur has worked hard to bring the
already heard about the college and had
personal into the professional. When he
considered applying to St. John’s. Another
started his business in Santa Fe, he looked
old friend, Nick Kennedy (A81), had gone to
for a way to fit himself into his chosen
St. John’s and introduced Laur to the three
community. He wanted to attach his
men in his Annapolis crew. The experience
business to an existing story, and he found
on the boat, Laur says, “elevated St. John’s
that story in the orchards of New Mexico.
to the short list of things I wanted to do in
Planted by Spanish settlers 400 years ago
my life.”
with rootstock from Asturias in northwest
“I suppose the main point about sailing
Spain, the orchards risked losing their
with these guys,” Laur adds, “was that
water rights to fast-growing urban
during the 10 weeks or so that it took us
communities nearby. Laur wanted to help
to reach Australia, we had one or two
keep water in rural communities and began
conversations about life and our condition.
working to create a market for apples from
We didn’t spend much time in port-three
local orchards.
days in Panama and three days in Tahiti-so
The way he approached being an
most of the time we were logging miles at
entrepreneur came out of his liberal arts
sea and under sail, only running the engine
sensibilities. “My background has not been
an hour a day to charge the batteries.”
a business degree from Harvard,” he says.
After finishing his undergraduate degree
“It’s been about creating synergies with the
at the California Maritime Academy, Laur
W
{The College
- St. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
Paul Laur went
from sailing the seas
IN A MERCHANT MARINE CAREER TO
SELLING CIDER MADE FROM NeW MeXICO
APPLES.
found a career in the Merchant Marine
that allowed him to attend the graduate
program at St. John’s in Santa Fe
between trips to sea. He met his wife,
Ruth, just as he was finishing up at
St. John’s. It was then that Martin
Crowley, who had hired Laur years
before to deliver a sailboat, invited
Laur to manage a rum factory for him
in the Caribbean. This experience with
Pyrat Rum introduced Laur to the art
and science of taste.
“I became really good at picking up
subtle differences and could identify
which component was causing what,
yet I still had a lot of stuff that fed my
scientific geekism,” Laur says. “I love the
scientific process, but without the tasting
that goes along with it, it makes you a
plumber at best, rather than a composer.”
When Laur and his wife had their first
son, they returned to Santa Fe rather
than raise him in the Caribbean, “where it
would be a battle to get him to wear shoes.”
They founded the Santa Fe Cider Company
in 1999Being in Santa Fe allowed Laur to
participate in community seminars at
St. John’s that have fed his intellectual and
entrepreneurial interests. At a community
seminar on Flannery O’Connor, Laur met
Owen Lopez, executive director of the
McCune Foundation, which supports small
business and community development in
Santa Fe. Lopez became a great supporter
of Laur’s company. Laur also enjoyed a
seminar led by tutor Krishnan Venkatesh,
Graduate Institute director, on food, taste,
and the culture of connoisseurs.
Laur aims constantly for connection:
education to business, science to art,
living to livelihood. “Having a liberal arts
education,” he says, “means thatyou’re
liberated from being ultra-conservative and
having to have all the hghts green before
you go forward.”
�4a
{Alumni Notes}
2001
Matthew Lippart (SF) writes,
“After four years of crashing
up against the system, my
school is getting its own
building! Yay! In addition, I
would like to teach overseas
next year (China or India,
preferably) so any advice,
suggestions, or connections
would be appreciated. (Online
at mlippart@hotmaiLcom.)”
Talley Scroggs (A) and
Louis Kovacs (Aoa) are
living in Baltimore, Md. Lots
in the works, Talley writes:
Lou’s in medical school, Talley
is working three jobs and
applying to JD/MB A
programs, and they’re getting
“hitched” next June. They’d
be happy to hear from anyone
in town.
Southern Methodist University
in Dallas, Texas, this August.
She will be joining her
husband, George Finney
(SF99), who is starting his
second year in the same
program.
Erin Krasniewicz and Randy
Pennell (both A) are living in
Philadelphia and would love to
hear from other Johnnies in
the area. Randy works for the
Associated Press, and Erin
works for the Pew Charitable
Trusts. “If you are going to
visit Philadelphia and want to
know where to find the best
cheesesteaks, drop us a line
first! (Hint: It’s not Pat’s or
Gino’s.)”
nothing special.” He lives in
Philadelphia and is studying to
be a counseling psychologist.
Please contact him at
woollyrubric@yahoo.com if
you have any leads regarding
the whereabouts of a video
copy of Philoctetes: the
Musical, the class of 2002’s
notorious RealPlay. Also, he
writes, please contact him if
you can offer him a job in the
Philadelphia area.
2004
from chiropractic school this
April and will be spending the
summer in Brussels, Belgium,
learning French. She writes:
“I would love to hear from
anyone from St. John’s:
Drlauren@gmail.com.”
John C. Gorczynski (SF)
writes: “I have enjoyed
working for the mayor’s Office
of Public Safety and Homeland
Security in Houston, Texas. I
am very excited to be moving
to the San Francisco Bay area
this fall with Katie de Mahy
(SF03). See all you alumni out
there.”
Mark Ingham (SF) is living
the contemplative life: “I drive
a vacuum in the North
Canadian Oilfield while
listening to my own audio
recordings of Nietzsche.”
2003
In June, Ann Carruthers (SF)
finished her master’s degree in
philosophy at the University of
California, Irvine. She is now
living in Austin, Texas, with
Steven Orsinger (SF03) and
beginning a Ph.D. program in
political philosophy in the
Government department at
the University of Texas.
Mary Duffy (A) has signed on
for a lo-month stint with
AmeriCorps at the South
Whidbey Community
Engagement Center in
Washington State. “Whidbey
Island is in the Puget Sound,
about an hour north of Seattle,
including the ferry ride,”
writes Mary. “I’ll be living on
the island, sharing a house
with two other volunteers on a
stretch of Sunlight Beach,
which sits on Useless Bay.
I am still writing poetry and I
hope to finish a novel in verse
by next summer. I would love
to hear from Johnnies in the
Pacific Northwest, and can
be e-mailed at
hisgirlfriday@gmail.com.”
What’s Up?
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 May; dead
line for the alumni notes
section is March 15.
Alumni notes posted to the
college’s online community will
also be included in The College.
Visit www.stjohnscollege.edu;
click on Alumni.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 3800
Annapolis, MD 31404;
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
In Santa Fe:
Rebecca Anne Dwyer (SF)
Amanda Kennedy Finney (SF)
will begin her first year in the
evening law program at
2005
Lauren Shofer (A) graduates
2002
Evan Draper (A) is “doing
Applied Linguistics beginning
in fall 3006: “I am very
excited about this, having
spent the last two years
teaching English as a second
language in Taiwan and China
(which, according to the
Chinese, are the same),” she
writes. “I am glad that the
St. John’s education has
prepared me for graduate
study and that the good people
in Scotland realize it. The
program is 13 months long.
Edinburgh was my first choice
because of the vast linguistic
resources they have.”
has been accepted to study at
the University of Edinburgh’s
Master of Science program in
{The College -St John^s College ■ Winter 2006 }
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
�{Tributes}
43
Remembering Ralph Swentzell
Santa Fe tutor Ralph Swentzell, a faculty
member from 1966 until his retirement in
2003, died of cancer last summer. At a
memorial service September 25, he was
remembered as a lifelong learner, as a man
with many diverse interests, and as a
devoted husband and father. In the words
of Dean David Levine, Mr. Swentzell
represented for many of his colleagues
“the paradigm of the St. John’s tutor:
An insatiable desire for learning joined to a
generous spirit, he mentored and inspired
generations of students and tutors alike.”
Similarly, Mr. Swentzell’s ability to
balance the demands of being a St. John’s
tutor, while raising a family and pursuing
many diverse interests, inspired colleagues
such as Tim Miller, who joined the faculty
shortly after Mr. Swentzell. “Because of
the hours of study needed by a tutor
teaching parts of the Program for the first
time, the strain on the tutor’s home life is
enormous. . . I think Ralph found a
balance between the two
obligations as well as any tutor
I have known. The collaboration
of Rina and Ralph in designing
and building their beautiful solar
home remains an inspiration for
me and I’m sure for many
others.”
The following are some
additional remembrances from
Mr. Swentzell’s colleagues and
friends:
"'He liked to play
with ideas, not because
he took them lightly,
but because hefound
them so beautiful and
fascinating.
Tom Simpson
met his wife and life companion, Rina.
After Mr. Bunker and Mr. Boyd were
recruited to St. John’s College,
Mr. Swentzell followed, and he joined
our faculty in 1966, retiring in 2003 after
37 years of active and exceptional teaching
(and learning).
Jorge AiGLA,Tutor
Ralph Swentzell was born in East
Patterson, N.J., on July 13,1938,
attended the local public high
school, and joined the U.S. Air
Force Band at the age of 17 in
1956, where he remained for four
years playing clarinet. In his free
time he read widely and was
much affected by the writings of
Freud. He went to study
psychology at Highlands
University in Las Vegas, N.M.,
where he came under the
tutelage of Robert Bunker and
Stuart Boyd, and where he also
Ralph Swentzell made significant
contributions to our Program: he was
instrumental in introducing original papers
to our music and junior mathematics
tutorials, and his helpful handwritten notes
for the junior and senior laboratories and
senior mathematics are legendary in their
clarity and true liberal approach. Ralph was
an early incentive in the planning and
formulation of the Eastern Classics
program, and was responsible for the firstever computer-based Chinese lexicon.
Several of us had the privilege to be in his
“Computers and the Mind” Schmidt
Study Group the first year this fellowship
was awarded.
If there ever was a man who learned from
learning, it was Ralph Swentzell. For him,
teaching was an excuse for touching
students and colleagues. To co-lead a
seminar with him or to be in a tutors’
meeting with him, were transforming
experiences. Every conversation (about
anything) was a conversion. One
could feel oneself learning from
him and being changed by his
authentic human presence.
Ralph illuminated the texts,
never disposing of them; he opened
the books while he allowed himself
to be intimately and personally
opened by them. One could often
hear him in the hallway or Quad. ..
saying to his interlocutor: “Yeah,
yeah that sounds right, and from
what you are saying it is as if.. .”
and then he went on clarifying and
amplifying whatever was centrally
at stake in the conversation.
His personal interests were deep
and broad: neural networks,
consciousness, quantum
mechanics, computer modeling,
relativity, emergence, Chu Hsi
and Neo-Confucianism, Bodhid
harma, thermodynamics,
biochemistry. Ralph was an
intrepid wind surfer, a house
A MAN WITH MANY INTERESTS, TUTOR
Ralph Swentzell left his mark on
St. John’s College.
{The College - St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�44
builder (he and his family
built their lovely home in
Santa Fe and their weekend
home in Madrid), a jogger,
and a lover of sweets and
used bookstores, and since
his retirement, he was
engaged in learning how to
play the guitar.
As an individual he was
kind, gentle, acute, compas
sionate, without a tinge of
pride in his polymathy or
intelligence. Through him
many of us were granted a
glimpse into the mystery of
friendship.
Ralph was a devoted
husband for 45 years and a
loving father of three
wonderful daughters,
grandfather of twelve, and
great-grandfather of three
children. He made time to be
with his family, and to make
a family.
Tom Simpson
Tutor Emeritus
In thinking about Ralph Swentzell, the
word that comes first to my mind is
“hearty.” I think of his hearty laugh, his
zest for ideas, his love for people and for
the world-his total dedication to the
pursuit of truth, and an almost diffident
modesty about any claim to having arrived
at it! For many years, Ralph and I have
been good companions in adventures of all
sorts, including, most of all, adventures of
the mind. Whatever crazy idea I came up
with, I could always count on him to give a
hearing to, and find some possibilities in it,
but when I came up with a seemingly safe
and innocuous idea, he would say gently
that he’d been wondering about that-and I
would find that the idea I had thought so
simple and secure in fact had a very
different side, and opened up in ways I had
never imagined.
He liked to play with ideas, not because
he took them lightly, but because he found
them so beautiful and fascinating. The
more seriously he took them, the more he
delighted in that play. I think it’s fair to say
that however far afield his personal inter
ests took him, the college was always in
some way close to the center of his life-not
{Tributes}
in its institutional aspect, certainly, but
because those books and those questions
were always so vivid and vital to him. They
were part of his lifeblood, and that is why it
was always so exciting to share them with
him. He suffered immensely-more than
most of us, I suspect-when institutional
constraints seemed to cramp and distort
that open chase for truth.
He did indeed voyage far from the known
shores of our Western learning! Armed with
that computer program he had devised to
open Chinese works to our tutorial way of
starting out by reading fascinating texts -he
took off for the far shores of Eastern thought.
He went to the core of the question of what
language is, and how it serves thought. He
knows, as Scott Buchanan had before him,
that it is only by getting far outside the
confines of our presuppositions, that we
might be able to see ourselves in our true
proportions-not as Western, or Eastern, but
as fully human. With the Eastern Studies, he
threw a challenge to the college, one which I
always felt we had really failed to hear. It is
not too late for that!
When Ralph got hold of a good idea, he
would not let go of it. Many years ago,
when he and I were thinking about possible
spaces and other worlds, we began
wondering about the strange structure of
the Lobachevskian geometry. What would
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
it mean, we wondered, to be
living in a world like that?
We tended to conclude, as
everyone does, I guess, that
depending on the scale,
things might not seem so
different. The closer you got,
the less you would know
where you were! There
seemed to be a moral in that.
We had that conversation
long ago. But just a few
weeks ago I had a chance to
visit with Ralph one more
time, catching him, as it
happened, at a moment when
he was briefly filled again
with his old exuberance. He
went up the little stairs to his
computer room to make me a
copy of the latest version of
the Chinese dictionary-and
then called down, “Hey!
Come on up! I want to show
you something! ” Thinking
back to that old conversation, he had
worked up a computer program which was
ready to take you anywhere you wanted to
go in the Lobachevskian world. You could
go to any farthest corner, and there look
around to see what the cosmos looked like.
Sure enough-our old speculation was
verified: the deeper you got into that
cosmos, the more it looked like home!
Ralph had achieved a special stance, at
some far corner of the cosmos best known to
him-from which he could see all his worlds
at once-the Western one, with the music,
the mathematics, the quantum perplexities
he loved so much-the Pueblo one, in its deep
peace with the cosmos-and the Chinese one,
with its special power to see truth as at once
aesthetic and whole. He hasn’t solved every
thing, or maybe anything, but he had seen so
much! He was ready to take it all on, with
that hearty laugh and an undying sense of
wonder and amazement.
It was very typical of Ralph that at the
end of our last few minutes together, he
said he wanted to lend me a book. It was
the philosophy of Hua-Yen, and he thought
it might be just what I was looking for. I
don’t yet know just what he meant, but I
still have the book. I have my assignment,
and I’ll see what I can do with it! ♦
(Read by Hans von Briesen)
�{Tributes}
45
A Homecoming Tribute to Bill O’Grady
William O 'Grady was a tutor at St. John's
Collegefrom nj7o until his death in tgS6.
In a relatively short time at the college,
Mr. O 'Grady made a lasting impression on
many students and tutors, and his absence
is stillfelt.
Mr. O’Grady now has a permanent
memorial: aframed collage ofpictures
taken on his wedding day, unveiled during
Homecoming in the Coffee Shop. Several
former tutors, friends, and colleagues of
Mr. O ’Grady gathered to share their memo
ries. Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney, A’25,
offered this tribute:
When we call to mind the dead that we love
we sometimes make them better than they
were. Especially if they diedyonng or
untimely we try to balance our sense of
what was taken from them with the most
generous account of what they took: unahle
to see why they should he gone while we
remain, we conclude that it should he vice
versa. So a certain kind of eulogizing is
distantly akin to what Priam does when he
calls his remaining sons worthless after the
death of Hector, or even heaping dirt and
ashes on his own head. There may also he a
kind of suspicious ease in praising the
dead: let their virtues he what they will, we
feel we cannot he properly compared to
them until our lives, too, are over.
I mention these dangers not supposing
that hy naming them I can be sure of
entirely escaping them, hut as an
invocation of the spirit of truth. It should
he possible to praise someone, even
extravagantly, while speaking truly. I
hope you will take what I say with less
than a grain of salt.
I knew Bill O’Grady first as my
sophomore math tutor, then through his
Friday night lectures, then as a colleague
when I became a tutor in Santa Fe and he
spent several years on that campus.
I do not remember much of that math
tutorial 33 years later; I was not working
at it with real devotion or deep interest.
I may not have been atypical: what I
remember is Bill reading aloud to us
sometimes-an essay or maybe a story
in what I now recognize were attempts to
kindle a fire in our unseasoned, soggy
souls. He did not try to blame or
intimidate the class into more serious
learning, nor did he lecture on what he
himself had learned or was learning. He
kept presenting us with opportunities.
Of the things he read, I remember only
one. It was about a Mexican bullfighter
whose nickname was “El Loco,” perhaps
because on his bad days an unprejudiced
observer might decide that he had just as
good of a reason to be in the bullring as a
lunatic escaped from an asylum. On those
days it seemed a miracle he was not killed.
But on his good days every move he made
seemed a miracle of grace and skill. You
left the stadium proud of the whole human
race. El Loco had an enormous following,
whether in spite of or because of one’s
never knowing if a particular performance
would be his best or his last. What, asked
the writer, would it be like for us to judge
one another and ourselves not on the basis
of our everyday fumblings but according to
what we are at our very best? That question
continues to resonate for me, occasioned
not only by my students or colleagues but
also by my own mysterious inertia and
capacity to disappoint myself.
But it was as an interpreter of texts in
Friday night lectures and question periods
that Bill O’Grady seemed to me to fully
manifest his own gifts. He was the most
penetrating reader I have ever known.
He read not only with his mind but also
with his heart. Under the light of his
attention books revealed themselves to be
more beautifully put together than I could
have imagined possible, and to be more
directly addressing my own heart and soul
than I could have dared to hope, and these
were not separate. . . He never talked down
to students. I think this was because he had
read and thought, to paraphrase Pascal, not
like a professional scholar, but like a
human being.
He once proposed as an example of what
Socrates meant by finding his corroborating
witness within the very one he sought to
persuade the story of Nathan the prophet
rebuking King David for his murder of
Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. Nathan tells
David of a rich man who has taken his poor
neighbor’s one ewe lamb, his beloved pet,
and slaughtered it to feast a visitor, though
he had many flocks of his own. David
exclaims, “That man deserves to die!” and
Nathan replies, “Thou art the man.” It is
the vividness of David’s realization that the
story is about him that I find in all of Bill’s
encounters with texts. He is not present as a
specialist, an impartial expert who has built
an airtight case that will be most interesting
only to fellow experts, but as a fellow doer
and sufferer with the author, with the
characters, whose own fate is tied to the
questions of issue.
We are all prone to imagine that it might
after all be best and most admirable to
be some kind of expert about some
thing. Even El Loco on his good days
looked as if he knew everything about
bullfighting. And whether best or not,
all kinds of expertise are necessary, if
life is to be more than just survival. But
whether all things in the world are as
they are merely by necessity or because
it is somehow for the best is not a
question to be decided by expertise.
And those for whom that question can
be a matter of their own happiness or
misery, of life or death, could do worse
than to take Bill O’Grady as an
exemplar, to read what he wrote and
remember what he said and did, and to
find his spirit alive in all that is best
about St. John’s College.
Tutor William O’Grady
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
�{Obituaries}
Thomas McDonald, Class of 1948
Former Tutor
Thomas McDonald, a tutor for three
decades on both the Annapolis and Santa
Fe campuses, died after a long illness from
complications of Parkinson’s Disease on
December 27, 2005, in Baltimore, Md.
Mr. McDonald was born in Atwood,
Kansas, and lived in Kentucky, Missouri,
Iowa and Illinois before arriving in
Alexandria, Virginia, in 1941 at the age of
13. He enrolled in St. John’s at the age of
16. The following summer at age 17, when
informed that at 6'5" he was too tall to be a
Marine, he requested and received a Senate
Naval Affairs Committee waiver to enlist in
July 1945Discharged in late 1946, Mr. McDonald
attended the University of Virginia briefly
and then entered the New School for Social
Research in New York. There he studied
philosophy under Karl Lowith and Hans
Jonas. In 1958, after serving as a lecturer at
the New School, he taught for three years
in the University of Chicago’s Basic
Program of Liberal Education. Following a
year in Europe, he joined the St. John’s
faculty in 1963. He taught for several years
in the 1970s and 1980s at the college’s
campus in Santa Fe, NM. He also served as
a visiting professor at East Texas State
University and as a visiting fellow at the
Kennedy Center for Bioethics at
Georgetown University. An authority on
Kant, he spent his 1976-1977 sabbatical
year in Germany. He retired in 1991,
but continued to teach part-time.
Santa Fe tutor Jim Carey (class of 1967)
had Mr. McDonald for his freshman
math tutorial in 1963, and felt very
fortunate to have known him as a tutor
and a colleague. “He was in, my opinion,
the finest tutor who ever taught at
St. John’s,” Mr. Carey said.
Howell Cobb, Class of 1944
FederalJudge
Howell Cobb, class of 1944, who had a
distinguished career as a jurist, died
Sept. 16. 2005. Judge Cobb was born in
1922 to lawyer and state circuit Judge
Howell Cobb and his wife, Dorothy Hart
Cobb, in Atlanta, GA. He was reared in
Georgia and Washington, D.C. From 1940
to 1943, he attended St. John’s, but World
War H interrupted his studies. He served
as a second lieutenant in the Marine
Corps, where he saw action as a
John Mack, class of 1945
fighter/bomber pilot in
the South Pacific.
After the war. Judge
Cobb earned an LL.B,
from the University of
Virginia 1948. He
attended the University
of Texas Law School to
prepare for the Texas Bar
Examination and in 1954
was hired by the firm of
Orgain, Bell, & Tucker in
Beaumont. He became a
partner in 1956. In 1985,
President Ronald Reagan
appointed Cobb a U.S.
District Judge. He served
for 20 years, assuming
senior status as a sitting
judge in March 2001.
Judge Cobb is survived
by his wife, Amelie; six
children; and 21 grandchildren.
John Mack, Class of 1945
Former BVG Member
John Duncan Mack, class of 1945, of
Concord and Chatham, Mass., died
Sept. 27, 2005.
Mr. Mack was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in
1924 to Josephine and John George Mack.
He served two tours as a sergeant in the
U.S. Army Infantry in World War II in the
South Pacific and was awarded a Silver Star
and a Purple Heart.
Mr. Mack’s studies at Annapolis were
interrupted by the war. He began at
St. John’s as part of the class of 1945, but
received his diploma in 1948. He became a
very active supporter of the college, serving
as a member of the Board of Visitors and
Governors and as national fund-raising
chairman. He graduated from Harvard
Business School in 1950.
Mr. Mack began a long career as a
marketing executive at Welch’s Grape Juice,
followed by Procter & Gamble, Clairol,
Bristol-Myers, and Gillette. From 1976-1992
he was president of Carter-Products, CarterWallace, in New York City.
During his career, he was president of the
Wave Hill Environmental Center in
Riverdale, N.Y., and was elected to the
Township Committee of East Amwell, N.J.,
{The College
St John’s College ■
IVinter 2006 }
where he served as Deputy Mayor. While
living in Concord, he was a trustee of the
Thoreau Society, trustee of the Thoreau
Farm Trust, and a member of the Historic
District Commission.
Mr. Mack is survived by his wife, Lorna
Carey Mack; by his sisters, Anne Dean and
Mary Hurst; by his four daughters, Pamela
Mack, Sheila Mack, Carey Weber, and Lorna
Sheridan; and by seven grandchildren.
Theodore X. Barber, class of 1947
Psychologist
Theodore X. Barber, 78, whose pioneering
research and writings explored hypnosis
and the nature of consciousness, died of a
ruptured aorta Sept. 10, 2005, in Boston.
Hailed as one of the most prolific and
revolutionary authors on hypnotism.
Dr. Barber, a psychologist, developed the
Barber Suggestibility Scale to examine
scientifically the experience of individuals
under hypnosis. He conducted his work
for more than 35 years at the Medfield
Foundation and Cushing State Hospital in
Massachusetts.
Doing post-graduate work at Harvard,
Dr. Barber read a paper in a British
medical journal describing how hypnosis
had improved an “incurable” skin
condition of a teenage boy. The case, he
later wrote, “indicated that the royal road
�{Obituaries}
to solving the mind-body problem” was
hypnosis.
Dr. Barber served as president of the
Massachusetts Psychological Association
and of the Hypnosis Division of the
American Psychological Association.
He received numerous awards, including
the Presidential Award for Lifetime
Contributions to the Field of Hypnosis, by
the Society for Clinical and Experimental
Hypnosis (aooa).
Two of his most widely read books are
still in print; Hypnosis: A Scientific
Approach (1969), and Advances in Altered
States of Consciousness and Human
Potentialities (1976).
In his work The Human Nature ofBirds:
A Scientific Discovery with Startling
Implications (1993), he showed how birds
have intelligence equal and sometimes
superior to that of humans.
Born in 1927 to Greek immigrant parents
in Martins Ferry, Ohio, Barber graduated
from high school at age 15 then enrolled at
St. John’s. He earned his doctorate in
psychology at American University in
Washington, D.C., and then moved to
Boston to do post-graduate work at Harvard.
Henry Clay Smith, Class of 1934
Psychology Professor
Henry Clay Smith, a member of the class of
r934, died in West Tisbury, Mass., at the age
of 92. Dr. Smith was born in T913 in
Catonsville, Md., was raised by maiden aunts
after the death of his mother, and attended
St. John’s on a scholarship. After graduation,
he went on to earn a doctorate of psychology
at Johns Hopkins University.
For 38 years, he was a professor of
psychology at Michigan State University.
He taught, conducted research, and
puhhshed books on industrial psychology,
personality development, and sensitivity to
people. His early work on the effects of
music on productivity of assembly line
workers helped make music part of the
background of daily work hfe. Among his
publications were three major textbooks and
numerous articles.
Dr. Smith strove to achieve a rich, balanced
life in the manner of his idol, Thomas
Jefferson. He designed and built a house
based around a three-story tower, which was
his home for the past 30 years. His self
improvement projects ranged from yoga to
developing a legacy blueberry patch and
reading rpth-century novels. He was an avid
player of tennis, golf, and croquet. The last
of his writing projects, a biography of
Thomas Jefferson, was in progress as his
illness progressed.
Dr. Smith is survived by his wife, Nancy,
three children, eight grandchildren, and six
great-grandchildren.
Tania Forte, Anthropologist
by Michael N. Fried (A8a)
Tania Forte (A85) died from a cerebral
aneurysm on November 17, 2005. She was
46. At the time of her death she was a visiting
scholar at Hamline University in St. Paul,
Minn., on leave from the anthropology
department at Ben Gurion University of the
The goodness ofher
friendship was in its
being both pleasing
and elevating
Michael N. Fried
(A82), on Tania Forte
Negev in Israel. She was highly regarded by
her professional colleagues and she was
loved by all those who had the good fortune
of knowing her.
After leaving St. John’s, Tania studied
anthropology at the University of Chicago
and completed a Ph.D. there in aooo. Her
doctoral work concerned transactions, land,
and histories in a small Arab village in the
Galilee. Her research during the last few
years centered on the production and use of
images of the Palestinian-Israeli conllict-the
conflict through the lens of the television
camera, one might say. She was also working
on a book on the everyday practices of three
generations of Palestinian women in the
Galilee. In all this work, she saw people
producing stories and images, and she was
fascinated with how these verbal and visual
accounts served both to represent the world
and to define the identities of those
producing them, in short, how people create
themselves by the histories they teU.
Tania’s own history was itself an extraordi
nary tale. Her grandparents came from Gaza,
Turkey, Iraq, and Italy; her parents. Clement
and Daisy, were born in Egypt, were exiled
by Nasser after the 1956 Suez war, and even
47
tually immigrated to France. Tania grew up
in France, but she was born in London and
kept a British passport-her only passportall of her life. Tania would probably have
allowed her British passport to quietly
expire, were it not necessary to have some
passport: such things were of little impor
tance to her. Thus she wrote in a little piece
called “Weedlings”: “Since I’m not very
good at nationalities I have not changed it
[her passport] through years of living in
four other countries, where the last thing
anyone would suspect about me is that I
am a subject of Her Majesty.” She was one of
those people who seem to belong nowhere
and everywhere.
Tania entered St. John’s in Annapolis as a
Febbie in 1982.1 graduated that year and
hardly knew Tania in the few months we were
both at the college. But when she came to
Ben Gurion University, we spoke about the
college constantly. Like most of us, she felt a
great sense of loyalty and debt towards
St. John’s and believed it to be a central
locus for her intellectual formation. Indeed,
I can remember a conversation shortly
before she left for Minnesota in which she
said that it was becoming increasingly clear
to her how genuinely different we are from
our respective colleagues because of those
four years in Annapolis.
I hope I will be forgiven for speaking just
now in the first person, but Tania was a very
good friend. And here I must say that Tania’s
intellectual gifts were equaled by her
capacity for friendship. As a friend she was
warm and generous, she knew how to laughshe had a wonderful laugh-but she also knew
how to demand. She would not allow her
friends to fall into easy self-pity, moral or
intellectual laziness. The goodness of her
friendship was in its being both pleasing
and elevating.
Also Noted:
Winston Gilbert Gott, class of 1931,
May 3005
W. Morris Shannon, Class of 1937,
July 39,3005
Thomas Spence Smith, class of 1938,
February 3005
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�48
{Alumni Voices}
GOING HOME
Life in Katrinas Wake
BY Sara Roahen, SF94
n the last Tuesday in
October, I flew home to
New Orleans for the
second time since
Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita lashed and inundated
the city. On the approach, the plane sailed
above Lake Pontchartrain, whose calm
waters appeared impossibly untouched
by the storms, and it cut across the
Sara Roahen, SF94
Mississippi River’s bends, around which
barges pushed and containers waited in
tidy rows to he emptied or filled, just like
they always had. The pilot took a wide
on a triumvirate of New Orleans institu
right turn and noted over the intercom,
tions: Angelo Brocato’s, an Italian ice
“Ladies and gentlemen: there’s downtovwi
cream parlor and bakery founded in 1905;
New Orleans to your left.” It didn’t occur
Venezia, an Italian restaurant where
to me until later that he would have said
almost nothing comes without red sauce;
the same thing to a cabin of tourists; at the
and Pho Tau Bay, a local Vietnamese chain
time it made sense for him to point out a
that marked a refugee community’s
hopeful, unflooded area to those of us
breakthrough into New Orleans’ popular
whose stomachs wrenched at the thought
food culture when it opened along the
of returning to our devastated city. But as
high-profile strip last year. The flood’s
my seat was on the right side of the plane,
unforgiving waters had marked the three
I saw what he didn’t mention; thousands of businesses with brown, waist-high stripes.
downed cypress trees turning fragile
Brocato’s and Venezia’s vintage neon signs
swampland into a game of pick-up sticks;
had smashed to the ground; we found Pho
aqua-blue FEMA tarps reflecting like
Tau Bay’s two blocks away. It was a full
swimming pools in the sun from nearly
month after Katrina, but no one had begun
every rooftop of suburban Kenner; dump
cleaning yet. I have never heard a sound so
upon dump of maggot-clogged refrigerators, startling as the silence that crashed down
some hurled willy-nilly into heaps, others in
when we shut off the car motor. No kids,
formation. This didn’t look like our city.
no streetcar, no electrical buzz, no birds.
We were a cabin of tourists after all.
We couldn’t even hear the flies that dark
My husband, Mathieu de Schutter
ened the ice cream parlor’s windows from
{SF94), and I took our first post-Katrina
the inside.
trip home exactly a month earlier, before
When people ask us about New Orleans,
we technically were allowed back into the
which happens less and less, the first
city. Matt is a resident at Children’s
question is always about our house. We’ve
Hospital, and a flash of his ID was
lived in New Orleans since 1999, when
convincing enough for the two peachMatt entered medical school at Tulane
fuzzed National Guardsmen securing
University, and we committed to the city
Earhart Boulevard. Before heading toward
last April by purchasing a house two blocks
our house, which we had heard was dry and from where we had rented for six years. We
standing, we drove to one of my favorite
wanted to stay in the neighborhood,
blocks, in an area called Mid-City, to check
mostly because it’s at the start of the Mardi
O
. though our house
is intact, our lives,
and those ofourfellow
New Orleanians,
are not.
{The College- St. John’s College • SVinter 2006 }
Gras parade route. The area turns into one
big, feel-good, family-oriented block party
for the two weeks preceding Mardi Gras;
even when we don’t feel like watching the
parades, we enjoy hearing the marching
bands warm up, feeling the bass drums
boom, watching families tromp along with
empty bags they hope to fill with beads,
doubloons, and penny toys. Our new
house, by the way, endured the storms like
a champ. We’ve had to replace some
roofing tiles, and a whole wall of siding,
and the ceiling in the living room, which
sagged precariously when the house
settled weeks afterward. A pecan tree fell
in the backyard, crushing our fence (but
thankfully not Matt’s skateboarding ramp),
and the house’s foundation cracked in
several places. All that can be fixed,
though, especially given that we have a
multi-talented neighbor whose six-pack
lunches we abide when no professional
bosses will.
Hearing the positive news about our
house, most people stop asking questions
and move onto the news of the day-that
sickening earthquake in Pakistan, White
House indictments, winter-which means
we rarely get to mention anymore that,
though our house is intact, our lives, and
those of our fellow New Orleanians, are
not. To begin with, we are moving to
Philadelphia. Matt got a second residency
position in anesthesia at the University of
Pennsylvania once it looked certain that
the program we had been banking on, at
Tulane, had lost its appeal (the program, in
fact, moved to Houston). We are the best
case scenario: we are alive, we have
insurance and savings, and we had our cat
with us when Katrina bore down. But that
doesn’t help our friends, who are damaged,
or the city we’re leaving behind, which
needs us.
You see old people, as old as my grand
parents, at The Home Depot buying new
�{Alumni Voices}
toilets and carrying
two-by-fours. You
talk to a co-worker
who didn’t have
insurance, and you
know that no one
will ever buy her
another house. You
read obituaries-too
many of them-for
people who died of
heart attacks and
strokes during their
evacuations, deaths
that don’t factor
into the official
hurricane death
toll. You see homes
that used to contain
lives gone silent,
smudged from the
black waters, and
spray-painted by
inspectors warning
“NO ENTRY.” The
owners of one of
them wrote back:
“Mom Is Okay.
We’ll Miss
Everyone. God
Bless.”
Four other
Johnnies took a
bigger hit than we
did and are staying. Sarah Todd and David
Olivier (both A94), and their two girls,
Louise, 4, and June, a, are renting a
friend’s guest house while their own home
is gutted and rebuilt. Billy Sothern and
Nikki Page (both A98) are soggy but
surviving. Billy’s father, a specialist in
mold remediation, has become a local
celebrity.
Fortunately there are light moments,
every day. When I finally got in touch with
our exterminator, we had a love-in over the
49
Sara Roahen and
Mathieu de
SCHUTTER, IN FRONT
OF THE HOME THEY
BOUGHT LAST APRIL.
Even though the
HOME WEATHERED THE
storm, the couple
HAD TO MOVE TO
Philadelphia.
phone, exchanging evacuation stories and
well-wishes. Natural disasters remind you
that people matter more than anything,
and that’s entirely good. We have room
mates now, friends whose apartment is too
moldy to inhabit, and another friend stops
by to take warm showers because his
neighborhood doesn’t have natural gas yet.
Our busy little household embraces us
with the sweet illusion that the city is
bustling again rather than barren. On top
of that, they say the oysters are safe to eat.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
our water is potable
even if it smells like
a Jacuzzi, and
restaurants in our
neighborhood are
busier than ever
with people who
would have killed
for a proper bowl of
gumbo during their
evacuations. The
other day, my friend
Cynthia and I took
the walk we used to
take once a week
before the storms:
through Uptown,
across the levee,
down the streetcar
line, past Audubon
Park, and back
home. Neither of us
mentioned the
bundles of branches
we had to hurdle, the smelly refrigerators
we passed, how empty the park seemed, or
how quiet it was on the streetcar tracks.
Like in our past lives in New Orleans, we
just felt lucky to be there.
�50
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
Dear Alumni,
I’ve been thinking
about Montaigne
lately.
He seemed
mundane and irrele
vant to me in sopho
more year, but he
has informed my life
in ways that other teachers have not. I’m
not sure why, but I think it has something
to do with practicality.
Every day I bump into challenges-some
more mundane than others. Each one asks
me to think carefully about myself and
others, about thought and action, about
perception and possibility. These situations
also demand that I act, hopefully in accord
with my insights and commitments. In the
Essays, Montaigne does the same thing,
but he does it better. He thinks about the
dilemmas of a normal life, makes sense of
them in ways that are moving and
profound, and takes courageous action.
A practical integration of the true and
the useful did not come easily to me. Even
with a pragmatic bent and the push of
economic necessity, it took me several
years to begin to braid thought and action
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
into a graceful whole. In midlife, the task is
still far from complete.
I think of this as my personal version of a
community-wide challenge. How do we
commit ourselves to the highest values
while living in a demanding and mundane
world? Montaigne can be a guide, but we
must work to live up to the challenge as
individuals and as the college.
These days, St. John’s is doing much
more to help alumni bridge this gap
between real and ideal than the college did
in earlier decades. For example:
Both campuses offer internships (the
Hodson Internship in Annapolis and the
Ariel Internship in Santa Fe) to help
students and recent alumni experience
professional lives that may interest them.
The Career Services offices on both
campuses are well stocked with informa
tion, and the directors and staff are quite
knowledgeable about options for work or
further education.
The Virgil Initiative matches alumni
with current students to help them under
stand the issues of transition and find
resources to help them thrive.
Association chapters welcome current
students and alumni into their seminars
and social events to help smooth the way.
As an institution, the college is also
making strides to integrate practicalities,
performance, and accountability into the
life of the mind. For example;
Our new president in Santa Fe, Michael
Peters, is attending to the practical issues
of the aging physical plant and other
matters that shape the health of the
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Paula Fulks
817-654-2986
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-375-901!^
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein
720^46-1496
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Diane Cowan
617-666-4381
dianecowan@rcn.com
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn
rlightburn@gmaiLnet
NEWYORK
Daniel Van Doren
914-949-6811
AUSTIN
Charles Claunch
512-446-0222
college.
A new college-wide chief information
officer, Cathy Smith, has joined the
community to build and implement infor
mation management solutions.
Christopher Nelson (SF70) continues to
shape a productive community in
Annapolis.
Under the leadership of Jeff
BishopfHAqb), the college-wide advance
ment effort continues to thrive, and alumni
support those efforts in a variety of ways.
Friends and foundations recognize the
quality of management and administration
for the college as well as the excellence of
the Program.
Both campuses reach out to prospective
students who represent the diversity of the
larger community.
The growing strength of the college
paves the way for new and ambitious goals
for tutor salaries, new facilities, and excel
lent services to support students and
alumni.
The college is healthy, and alumni are
thriving because we all recognize that the
practical and the theoretical are mutually
dependent, not mutually exclusive. Even if
I didn’t understand that as a sophomore, I
certainly understand it now. And
Montaigne showed me the way.
For the past, present, and the future,
Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76)
President
St. John’s College Alumni Association
NORTHERN CALIF.
Deborah Farrell
415-731-8804
SALT LAKE CITY
Erin Hanlon
801-364-1097
PHILADELPHIA
Helen Zartarian
215-482-5697
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-415Z
SEATTLE
Jon Bever
425-778-6372
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey
lake ©law-works .com
SOUTH FLORIDA
Jonathan Sackson
305-682-4634
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
805-684-6793
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
{The College- St. John’s College - Winter 2006 }
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Deborah Papier
202-387-4520
drpapier@verizon.net
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Peter Weiss
413-367-3174
�{Alumni Association News}
Barrand
Buchanan
IN Bronze
BY Patricia Dempsey
When Tylden Streett, class of 1950,
unveiled the busts he created of
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan at
Homecoming in Annapolis, there was a
sigh of delight from alumni gathered in the
Conversation Room for the All-Alumni
meeting. Though works-in-progress in
plaster, the life-size busts capture the spirit
of the two visionaries.
Streett created the busts as a personal
tribute to the two men, but also as a way to
keep Barr and Buchanan’s legacy at the
forefront. “At St. John’s, we are indebted to
Barr and Buchanan,” says Streett. “I think
some of the young students today are not as
aware of the fact that the college’s program
exists today because of them. They were,
to me, the most important thing about
St. John’s. I was very fond of them and the
memory of them, because St. John’s
changed my way of thinking and the
direction of my life.”
A few years ago during a slow period
with commissioned works, Streett began to
work on the busts. “My years at St. John’s
had an enormous influence on me-so these
portraits were appropriate,” says Streett,
who attended St. John’s after a military
career as a fighter pilot in World War II.
“I looked into a lot of colleges, but at
St. John’s I was impressed with how Barr
and Buchanan were educating students by
having them read the original works of
great thinkers.”
Streett worked from memory and photos
to sculpt the busts. Ideally when he sculpts
a subject, Streett poses the person once
and takes photos from many angles. “For
these portraits I didn’t have this luxury,”
says Streett, “but I knew them both.
Buchanan interviewed me before I
attended St. John’s, but I didn’t remember
his appearance; I knew Barr when I was a
student. Also Barr has a memorable kind of
face, an actor’s face-the features are put
together in such a way that one easily
remembers it.”
Streett, who graduated from the
Maryland Institute College of Art in 1955
after attending St. John’s for two years,
was invited to pursue graduate studies at
mica’s Rinehart School of Sculpture,
where he earned his master’s degree in
1957. A former director of the Rinehart
School who still teaches at MICA, Streett
has received numerous awards and grants.
In addition to his privately commissioned
work, he has created public works such as a
limestone gargoyle for the National
Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Streett starts with a life-size head shaped
in clay, “an ordinary head with no distin
guishing features,” then sculpts it to look
like the subject.”
When it came to Barr and Buchanan,
Streett sent those who were familiar with
Barr and Buchanan photos of the clay
sculptures and asked for suggestions.
“Many, such as John Van Doren (class of
r947), were very helpful. I’m still getting
comments. Some felt that Buchanan is
younger-looking in relation to Barr.”
Once Streett feels the clay stage is
complete, he moves on to the molds and
castings. “The mold is chipped off and I
end up with a plaster replica of the clay
bust.” Then comes a mold over the plaster
replica and a wax cast of the sculpture is
ready. Streett shapes and shades the wax
cast, and when he’s satisfied with it, a
ceramic mold goes over the wax cast.
At the foundry, the wax is melted out and
molten bronze is poured in.
When this mold is broken off it reveals
the bronze bust, but there is more work to
be done. “There are certain imperfections
created by the process and the hightemperature furnace which can cause the
mold to crack, and wax may flood out. So I
do what’s called a ‘chaste’ and go over the
whole surface with a hammer and a chisel
tool. I might polish the nose, a cheek
bone-surfaces where I want to bring up
51
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
elected 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.
Glenda Eoyang, SF76
A85
Secretary - Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
President -
Vice President - Jason Walsh,
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair-
Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, P.O Box 3800, Annapolis,
MD 31404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
light.” In the final stage, Streett creates a
patina using chemicals to change the
coloration.
Once the busts are completed-currently
they are at a Baltimore foundry being cast
in bronze thanks to the generous donations
of several alumni-they will be displayed on
campus, perhaps in the Barr Buchanan
Center. If their presence inspires future
and current Johnnies to learn more about
the two men who brought a “radical” new
concept of education to a small and
struggling college, that would be a good
thing, says Streett. In any case, he feels
that he has done
something to honor
two men who changed
his life.
“I did it for me,” he
adds. “They seemed
awfully important
to me.”
Tylden Streett
UNVEILED HIS TRIBUTE
IN PROGRESS—TO THE
New Program
FOUNDERS DURING THE
All-Alumni
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
meeting.
�5a
{St. John’s Forever}
A Changing
Campus
A comparison of these two aerial shots (top,
1939; bottom, 2004) shows the changes
that have come to the Annapolis campus
and its environs over the past sts decades.
Still to be built, as the historic photo shows,
were Campbell Hall, a dormitory, and
Mellon Hall, also home to the Francis Scott
Key Auditorium. The Carroll Barrister
House had not yet been moved from down
town to the campus. The turrets still graced
Pinkney Hall. The ungraceful stack
looming high above the trees was part
of the college’s heating plant, torn down
in 1950Shortly after the older photograph was
taken, major changes were made along
College Creek; trees were cut down and the
shoreline was filled in. The college’s
neighbors have also changed. State office
buildings and housing now flank the
campus on the west, and the rail lines are
long gone, replaced by Rowe Boulevard.
And of course, the Liberty Tree-aligned
with the south face of Pinkney in the older
photo-is missing from the contemporary
shot.
Yet even this more contemporary aerial
photograph is now outdated: Spector Hall,
nearly identical to Gilliam Hall (shown here
on back campus) and just south of the
building, is now complete and occupied.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�T
Priscilla Husted Griscom , class of 1955,
^955by Priscilla Hustei
DELIVERS HER TOAST DURING THE
rnscom.
Homecoming banquet; Alumni Association
President Glenda Eoyang looks on.
Class of 1955
Fifty years later
the names have all fled
Aristophanes, Euclid
old white men are dead
what did we study?
why did we so?
to all be forgotten
from a half century ago
we studied for pleasure
we studied for fun
we studied to talk
our ideas to let run
we studied to hear
what others did say
of nature, of gods,
of death, in their way
we studied to show
those unwelcoming men
how women could do it
better than them
we studied for power
we studied for pride
no study for grades
were then ever made
we studied for Wi n free
and Curtis and Bart
we studied our life
to live fuller and smart
we studied to argue
and studied to laugh
and studied to see
what women we’d be
we studied for love
for St. Johnnies we were
true to ourselves
we studied for HER
—Ki
Alumni Calendar
Opening Celebration, “With a Clear
and Single Purpose,” 7 p.m. Friday,
April 21,2006
;
Croquet
Sunday, April 23,2006 - i p.m.
Summer Alumni Seminars
gathering. The evening begins with coffee 5 in Santa Fe, July 24-28, 2006
and desserts, moves into FSK auditorium
for a program which features an overview
Homecoming, Santa Fe: July 28-30
of plans for the college’s future, and end^^ ,
with a champagne reception.
Homecoming, Annapolis:
Sept. 29-Oct. I, 2006
Homecoming in Annapolis, 3005
Left: Rachel Bartgis (A09) and beau
Joseph Pereira enjoy the Waltz Party;
Annapolis Dean Michael Dink (class of
1975)
ENJOYING HIS 30TH REUNION.
Above: Admiring a future Johnnie.
PHOTOS BY ALEX LORMAN
{The College
-Sf, John’s College •
Winter 2006 }
�Periodicals
Postage Paid
STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS ■ SANTA FE
Published by the
Communications Oefice
P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
ADDRESS service REQUESTED
*****************5-DIGIT 87529
S292 P1 15817 ANN1
MS. AMY MCCONNELL FRANKLIN
HC 74 BOX 24512
EL PRADO NM 87529-9546
�
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Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
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52
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The College, Winter 2006
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Volume 32, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2006.
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St. John's College
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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2006-01
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pdf
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The College Vol. 32, Issue 1 Winter 2006
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor)
Hartnett, John (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Borden, Sus3an
Goyette, Barbara
Knapp, Caroline
Maguran, Andra
Mattson, Jo Ann
Naone, Erica
Utter, Chris
Johnson, David
The College
-
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Text
�STJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
On Mozart
magine what Mozart would have thought of the sweeping claims made of his music
today, and of the various commercial enterprises that sprouted up as a result.
Listening to Mozart, according to some studies, can help produce smarter babies,
stimulate creativity in adults, and even motivate cows to produce more milk.
This report on the “Moozart” effect can be found on ABCNews.com: “On Hans
Pieter Sieber’s Priegola dairy farm in Villanueva del Pardillo, Spain, the secret to
success is not some newfangled technology or machine. . . Rather it is the dulcet, layered
tones of classical music.” In this case, the report claimed, Sieber’s 700 heifers went more
happily to their milking stalls when exposed to Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp in
D Major.
As the recipient of a “Mozart effect” CD, I can find no evidence as to whether Mozart’s
music has rendered anyone in my family smarter, more creative, or a better test taker.
However, personal experience has shown that “5oare sia il sento” from Cosifan tutte,
played on a continuous loop, has been proven to soothe both colicky babies and desperate
adults in the middle of the night.
While Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus gave Mozart a new prominence in the aoth century, it
also reinforced in modern popular culture all the myths that begin as rumors soon after
Mozart’s death in lygr. Here was a genius hounded, undermined, and ultimately driven to
death by that sulking mediocrity, Salieri. The fact that Mozart died while trying in vain to
finish his Requiem, along with reports that his body swelled up dramatically in his final
hours, helped to contribute to the conspiracy theories.
William Stafford debunks a dozen or so misconceptions about the composer in his book
The Mozart Myths. In short, Stafford concludes: Mozart was not poisoned, but died from
an infection; rheumatic fever may have factored in his rapid decline. Mozart didn’t suffer
from mental illness, wasn’t the playboy or drunkard he is sometimes made out to be, and
by most accounts was devoted to his wife, Constanze. Salieri, while no genius, really wasn’t
such a bad composer. Mozart’s professional and financial failures had more to do with his
inability to play along with the patronage system and to cater to the popular tastes of
his time.
At St. John’s, juniors discuss Don Giovanni in seminar and listen to several other Mozart
works in tutorial. Annapolis tutor Bill Pastille says the opera is sometimes a challenge to
discuss in seminar. For him, the archetypal Don Juan story of the libretto doesn’t quite
measure up to the superb music of this opera, though he points out that Kierkegaard found
the opera fascinating.
Pastille prefers The Marriage ofFigaro, often discussed in music tutorial. “The last two
minutes, the scene in which the countess forgives her husband, is a beautiful moment. It’s
like grace shining into the world.”
This issue of The College^ celebrates music at St. John’s by focusing on some of our
tutors-and there are many more at the college than can be profiled in these pages-who
share their musical talents with all of us.
-KU
I
The College
is published three times a year by
St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
postmaster:
Rosemary Harty, editor
443-716-4011
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
Patricia Dempsey,
managing editor
Jenny Hannifin,
Santa Fe editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
The College welcomes letters on
issues of interest to readers.
Letters can be sent via e-mail to
the editor or mailed to the
address above.
Annapolis
410-626-2539
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
Contributors
Ann Deger (SFii)
Sara Luell (A09)
Brooke McLane-Higginson
(AGI09)
Anna Perleberg (SF02)
Deborah Spiegelman
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
J
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170/^
J?
Mixed Sources
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�I -|
College
The
ZINE FOR Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
{Contents}
PAGE
ZO
DEPARTMENTS
From Freshman to
Johnnie
Was it speaking up in seminar, finishing
up the freshman essay, falling in love
with Ptolemy? Members of the class of
2011 share experiences that helped make
them feel like a Johnnie.
PAGE
Zz^
The Book that Changed
My Liee
Sometimes a book is so powerful it can
change your life in subtle or dramatic
ways, suddenly or over time.
PAGE
2
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Celebrating campaign success
Developing young leaders in Annapolis
What the tutors did last summer
Keeping the great books alive in Chicago
It’s all about community in Santa Fe
High praise for St. John’s
The reading list
A Graduate Institute family
Levan Hall update
News and announcements
9
LETTERS
30 BIBLIOFILE
Toby Barlow (SF88) explores lycanthropes
in love in Sharp Teeth-, also, new alumni
books in brief, and what the tutors
are reading.
2(0
Music in the Key oe Liee
34 ALUMNI
Exploring another side of our
multi-talented tutors.
PAGE
PROFILES
32 Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer (SF78)
keeps law and order in Seattle.
36 Judge Jean K. FitzSimon (A73) aims for
fairness in bankruptcy court.
38 Austin architect Francois Levy (SF87)
designs sustainable buildings.
40 Abby Weinberg (SFoo) is saving forests.
28
Alumni Voices
On Saturday nights, the fishnets
are on and the gloves are off for
Jane McManus (A93) and her roller derby
alter ego, Lesley E. Visserate.
48 SANTA FE ALUMNI RETURN
50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
PAGE 32
ON THE COVER
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Illustration by David Johnson
52 ST. John’s forever
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Celebrating Unprecedented Success
Exceeding the most ambitious
fundraising goal in the college’s
history called for saying thank
you in a big way, and of course,
saying it twice: first in Santa Fe
on July 25, when the college
announced it had raised $134
million, and again in September
in Annapolis. Alumni, parents,
board members, community
supporters, and friends from
across the nation joined
together to celebrate a land
mark achievement. In both
cities, the college marked how
much has already been achieved
through gifts to the campaign
and thanked those whose
contributions made the
campaign a success.
In Santa Fe, President
Michael Peters hosted a distinc
tively Southwestern-themed
celebration that began with a
reception in the tented parking
Spirits were high at Santa Fe’s July 25 “Celebracion.”
lot of the Student Activities
Center. Monsoon rains that
visited the campus earlier in the
parents, and foundations, as well as its faculty and staff and the
week yielded to sunny skies, and mariachis in studded charro suits
communities it serves, is what has been most heartening to me.”
greeted arriving guests. The main event took place in the SAC
Among the speakers were Reed Dasenbrock, secretary of the
basketball court, transformed by draping, banners, black carpet
New Mexico Department of Higher Education, and Santa Fe
and strikingly decorated tables. A jazz ensemble entertained as
Mayor David Coss. Both expressed their appreciation for the
guests enjoyed dinner and dessert.
college. “I grew up with St. John’s as a neighbor, and I am proud
“Without every gift, no matter how large or small, we would
that St. John’s is here,” said Coss. “You fit in right from the very
not be here tonight celebrating the campaign-a campaign that
beginning.”
achieved virtually every one of its goals-increased college
Ray Cave (class of 1948), a member of the college’s Board of
endowment, student internship programs, new dormitories in both Visitors and Governors and chairman of the college’s previous
Santa Fe and Annapolis,” Peters said. “This enthusiastic participa
campaign, was called upon to lead a champagne toast. He referred
tion, the knowledge that St. John’s is valued by its alumni, friends.
to a draft of a proposed new strategic plan for the college, which
The Campaign for St. John’s College raised $134 million for
the college, much of which is already at work in supporting
the Program;
• $43.6 for the support of financial aid
• $14.4 for improvements to student life, the libraries,
internships, and grants for teachers to attend the
Graduate Institute
• $29.3 million for increased faculty salaries and faculty
development
• $12 million for the construction of Gilliam and Spector
halls in Annapolis
• $13.5 million for the renovation of Mellon Hall
• $5 million for the construction of Norman and Betty Levan
Hall, to house Santa Fe’s Graduate Institute
• $5 million for a new dormitory in Santa Fe
{The College-
states: “mere survival is no longer an issue for St. John’s.”
“So I propose a toast. First: to a St. John’s where ‘survival is no
longer an issue.’ Second: To the glorious prospect that-once again
and for the foreseeable future-with due thanks to a successful
capital campaign-the following teachers will return to St. John’s
each fall: Homer and Plato, Kant and Descartes, Tolstoy and
Twain-along with too of their friends,” Cave said.
Although the news was already out, the celebration in
Annapolis, held in the FSK Lobby, was no less ebullient. A group
of grateful Johnnies sang “Ode to Joy” and Annapolis President
Christopher Nelson (SF70) thanked supporters for helping the
college surpass the $125 million goal for the campaign.
“We knew from the very start that to reach such an ambitious
goal we would need the support of everyone who knew and cared
about the college: our alumni, our friends in Annapolis and Santa
Fe and across the nation, and the parents of our alumni and
students-everyone had to play a part,” Nelson said. “And you
St. John’s College ■ Fall 200S }
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
3
Honoring Two Exceptional Supporters
Ron Fielding (A70) is named a Fellow of the college, to the
APPLAUSE OF (l. TO R.) AnNAPOLIS DeAN MiCHAEL DiNK (A75),
BVG Chair Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), and Santa Fe Dean
Victoria Mora.
The July campaign celebration included a special presentation
to two alumni whose contributions were essential to the success
of “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for
St. John’s College. Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora and Annapohs
Dean Michael Dink (A75) named two new Honorary Fellows of
the College, a distinction that has been bestowed by the faculty
of the college to just a handful of people over the years.
Ronald Fielding (A70) was honored “in appreciation of his
outstanding leadership as chair of the Campaign for St. John’s
College, his extraordinary generosity to the college, and in
recognition of his accomphshments in the field of finance.”
Sharon Bishop (class of 1965) was recognized “in appreciation
of her distinguished service as chair of the Board of Visitors and
Governors, her generosity and leadership during the period of
the Campaign for St. John’s College, and her contribution to the
field of human resources and social services.”
Both were moved by the honor, with Bishop noting, “none of
my tutors ever would have expected this from me! ”
Philanthropist Paul Mellon (class of 1944) and Columbia
University’s Mark Van Doren (HA46) were made honorary
fellows of the college in 1958-59. In 1996, Ray Cave (class of
1948) and Stephen Feinberg (HA96), co-chairs of the Campaign
for our Fourth Century were made honorary fellows.
came through! Boy, did you come through! My heart is so filled
with gratitude toward all of you for what you have done to secure
the future of this small but important college. We can’t say
thank you often enough for the good things you’ve helped us
accomplish.”
Before the speeches gave way to swing dancing, Elsabe Dixon
(Aio) took a moment to thank donors for what their gifts make
possible for St. John’s students now and in the future: “You have
given us the ability to be a great college through your contribu
tions to financial aid, student housing and student internships,”
she said. “You are the ones who have put in the time as a commu
nity to continue to support this community. And for everything
that you all have done for me and my fellow students, I am grateful
beyond what these words can say.”
{The College.
Above,
clockwise:
Santa Fe students
offered a hearty thanks to
CAMPAIGN donors; TUTOR ToM MaY AND HIS WIFE, PAMELA, AT THE
Annapolis; Luke Russell, Sam Porter, and Robert
Shaver (all Aog) perform; Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74), Santa Fe
GI Director Krishnan Venkatesh, and BVG Member Michael
Uremovich (SFGI05).
reception in
St. John’s College ■ Fall aooS }
�{From the Bell Towers}
Learning Leadership a
Long Way from Home
This past August, three
St. John’s students and alumni
traveled with five Annapolis
teenagers to the Dominican
Repuhhc, where they spent a
week living and working in the
remote mountain village of
El Ramon. The service trip,
designed to foster leadership
skills to prepare the teens to
make a difference in their
hometown communities.
was organized by Epigenesis, an
outreach project created and led
by Annapolis students.
Last spring, the group’s
founders (Jamaal Barnes, Aio;
Raphaela Cassandra, Ato;
Joshua Becker, Ao8; and Rachel
Davison, Ao8) received a
$10,000 peace grant from the
Kathryn Wasserman Davis
Foundation for their program.
They contacted local community
groups to develop ideas and
support for the program, then
recruited their participants.
Beginning last June, they met
together in Mellon HaU for
seminar-style discussions on
topics including leadership,
race, and social activism. The
international trip offered the
students an opportunity to put
their training into action.
Cassandra, Becker, and Adam
Meyers (A07) made the trip,
serving as chaperones for the
teens. The Dominican
Republic’s Ambassador to the
U.N. met their plane in Santo
Domingo. They stayed at a local
Cathohc school near El Ramon
for two nights, then packed up
their gear and two heavy suit
cases filled with books donated
by The Annapolis Bookstore for
the village’s library. Next came
the steep ride up the mountain
to El Ramon. “It was so steep we
had to get out and push at
Johnnies
and their
Epigenesis
PARTICIPANTS IN THE DOMINICAN
Republic. Back row (l. to r.):
Yosy Valasquez, Bryanna
Greene, Tobi Yusuf, Adam
Meyers (A07), Joshua Becker
(A08), Raphaela Cassandra
(Ato); Front row: Timothy
Greene and Tony Connor.
What the Tutors Did Last Summer
Ah, the lucky tutors. Each
summer they get to delve into
something new, seek a deeper
grasp of a familiar work, or
study unfamifiar subject matter
to prepare for a class they have
yet to lead. AU we get to do is go
to the beach.
In Annapohs, six tutors read
Virgina WoolFs The Waves.
Tutor Tom May, who led the
group, said, “Our study of the
novel ranged from close and
lengthy consideration of the
imagery of the interludes and
their relation to the foUowing
sections, to the development
and aging of each of the six
characters, to the larger effort
that Woolf makes to refashion
the novel as a literary form.”
The group also read and
discussed two poems that
resonated with particular
sections of the novel:
Wordsworth’s “Lines Written
on Westminster Bridge,”
related to Bernard’s arrival in
London, and W. H. Auden’s
“Stop aU the clocks” in connec
tion with NevUle’s account of
Percival’s death.
A group of Santa Fe tutors
delved into comedic hterature
with a study group that arose
from tutor David McDonald’s
{The College -5f.
aooy lecture on Rabelais.
The lecture sparked a dialogue
between McDonald and tutor
Alan Zeithn, and the two began
discussing ways in which
comedic works might be better
apprehended in the Program.
“Comedy has a reputation of
being hard to talk about at the
coUege,” said McDonald.
The two had three principal
aims for their summer study
group: to help participants
become better readers of
comedic writings, to look at the
many deep and intrinsically
interesting questions raised by
the study of these works, and to
John’s College • Fall 2008 }
times,” Cassandra says.
In El Ramon, the group
settled in on sleeping mats at La
Esperanza Community Center, a
concrete building with stone
floors, but no running water or
electricity. They shared long
days of hard work and learned to
dance the merengue at
communal dinners with local
village leaders. They also discov
ered “the parallels to service
work in the United States, and
the ways we could have an
impact back here in Annapolis,”
says Becker.
Working with Peace Corps
volunteers and local leaders, the
group conducted a census of the
350 families in El Ramon. They
also ventured into the lush rain
forest outside the village to dig
up plants for a prayer garden
they created near the village’s
community center. “The garden
was a way to cross the language
barrier,” says Cassandra. “We
learned how to work together,
planting side by side.”
For more on the project, visit
the group’s Web site:
www.epigenesisprogram.org.
—Patricia Dempsey
consider carefully the place of
comedic works at the college.
They set out to look beyond
surface-level comedy to
discover deeper meaning.
“Being amused [by a work] too
often means dismissal of its
intellectual seriousness,”
said Zeitlin.
The group was startled by
how different from each other
various comedic traditions
were-Aristophanes from
Terence, Chaucer from Lucianyet all managed to show how
our expectations of the world
are at odds with our experience
of it. “Comedy teaches us the
hmits of being able to control
our world,” said McDonald.
�{From the Bell Towers}
5
Summer in Santa Fe
In Santa Fe, the bustle of
campus life doesn’t slow during
the summer months-in fact, it
just gets busier. January
Freshmen and Graduate Insti
tute students are joined by
conference attendees from
around the world. The campus
hosted i6 groups this summer,
including Middlebury College’s
Bread Loaf School of English,
the Santa Fe Institute, the Glen
Workshop, and a bevy of biolo
gists, cosmologists and physi
cists from Los Alamos National
Labs. During the month of July
the college also hosted partici
pants in the Summer Classics
Johnnies and
Santa Feans of
all ages spread
blankets on the
athleticfield.
program, a diverse group
of alumni, Santa Feans,
and friends from across
the nation who gathered
for week-long seminars on
works including the
Mahabharata and the
Iliad and on topics such
as World War I in prose
and poetry.
This summer marked
the third year of the
college’s enormously
successful Music on the
Hill series, envisioned as
a way to bring St. John’s
and the Santa Fe commu
nity together through family
centered concerts. This year.
Music on the Hill kicked off
June II, beginning six weeks of
performances that drew crowds
of up to 1,500 people (up from
450 in the first year). National
and local acts representing a
range of styles from jazz to folk
to reggae to blues graced the
stage each Wednesday. John
nies and Santa Feans of all ages
spread blankets on the athletic
field to mingle, picnic, dance,
and enjoy music on beautiful
summer evenings.
This summer also saw the
college’s participation in the
5th Annual International Folk
Art Market, a global celebra
tion of international craft tradi
tions and the artists who partic
ipate in them. More than 100
artists from 40 different coun
tries attend the market, which
provides an opportunity for
artists and craftspeople to
share their work, exchange
ideas, and create sustainable
economic opportunities for
their home cultures. St. John’s
housed artists in the dorms the
first year of the market, and
many of the original attendees
recall their stays on campus
fondly. Some, particularly
those hailing from troubled or
strife-torn regions, remarked
that the market was “one place
we could always feel safe.”
As the event has grown.
artists no longer stay on
campus, but the college
continues to sponsor the event,
and President Michael Peters
sits on the market’s board of
directors. St. John’s also hosts
and organizes the One World
Dinner, a festive meal for more
than 350 people that allows
artists, organizers, sponsors,
and international dignitaries to
join together in cross-cultural
conversation. The success of
the International Folk Art
Market played a role in Santa
Fe’s recent designation as a
UNESCO Creative City.
—AnneDeger (SFii)
Above: Participants in the
International Folk Art
Market. At left: Summer aoo8
MARKED THE THIRD SEASON OF
Music
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Fall 200S }
on the
Hill.
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Supporting Chicago’s
Great Books College
Against all odds, a small,
independent liberal arts college
with a great books curriculum
overcomes serious financial
difficulties to survive. Sound
familiar? Shimer College,
“the great books school of
Chicago,” shares many aspects
of its history and educational
mission with St. John’s. In addi
tion, Shimer shares Christopher
Nelson (SF70), president of the
Annapohs campus and current
chairman of the Shimer Board
of Trustees.
Since he joined Shimer’s
board in 2005, Nelson has
helped advise the college in
critical matters such as
fundraising and student recruit
ment, a move from Waukegan to
Chicago, and choosing an
interim president. He also
assisted in the search that led
Shimer to its new president,
Thomas K. Lindsay, deputy
chair of the National Endow
ment for the Humanities.
Nelson has known of
Shimer since the early 1970s,
when as president of the
Chicago alumni chapter, he met
several St. John’s alumni who
were teaching at the college.
“I was very interested because
Shimer has a core curriculum
that looks a lot hke St. John’s
and a faculty that was clearly
dedicated to the college’s
mission,” he says.
Shimer was founded in 1853
in Mount Carroll, Illinois.
Under Robert Hutchins’ guid
ance, it became the great books
college of the University of
Chicago from 1950-1958. When
Chicago pulled out, the great
books remained. Falhng enroll
ment and crushing debt led the
college’s trustees to desperate
measures in the 1970s. They
voted to close the college and
sell the buildings and campus in
Mount Carroll; however, a
group of faculty and students
refused to give up. They
borrowed money to keep the
doors open, and the college
moved to Waukegan in 1979. “A
dedicated group of people kept
it going,” Nelson says. “The
faculty did all the administrative
jobs, as well as teaching, and
even the maintenance. Students
continued their studies, and the
college rebuilt itself.”
In part because St. John’s also
struggled to survive at times.
Nelson finds Shimer’s story
inspiring. Although students
can choose major fields of study
at the college, a required core
curriculum includes seminars
on the great works of Western
civihzation.
Nelson’s involvement with
the college began when he
became a friend of Shimer’s
former president, Donald
Moon, who remains on the
faculty. Throughout the years,
Nelson offered Moon advice and
support, and he joined Shimer’s
board at the invitation of Presi
dent William Rice. Nelson even
tually became vice chair and
began his term as chair in 2007.
Nelson is pleased that things
are looking up for Shimer. Two
years ago the college sold its
Waukegan buildings and moved
to the campus of the lUinois
Institute of Technology in
Chicago. Last year, the college
was profiled in the New York
Times and earlier this fall, the
college welcomed 45 freshmen,
its largest entering class in 30
years. “It’s important that this
school survive,” Nelson says.
Cassie Sherman {A04) is one
of four St. John’s alumni among
Shimer’s faculty and staff; like
Nelson, she’s determined to see
Shimer succeed. As assistant
admissions director, she does
everything from visiting high
schools to producing student
recruitment material. “I feel
hke I’m doing a good thing,”
she says.
{The College-
As CHAIRMAN OF ShIMER ColLEGe’s BoARD OF TRUSTEES, AnNAPOLIS
President Christopher Nelson (SF70) advises the college
LEADERSHIP.
“The Most Important
Ideas of our Civilization”
St. John’s is often mentioned favorably in books about educa
tion, but it’s always nice when a highly respected figure issues
high praise. In this case, it’s Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, who for
30 years was the president of George Washington University.
In his newly pubhshed memoir, Trachtenberg mentions
St. John’s in a chapter titled “The Ideal University”:
“St. John’s College ... is a smaU, intimate, teaching-oriented,
classics-focused institution that is sometimes mentioned as one
ideal. I remember when in 1954 a St. John’s representative came
to speak to a parent/student meeting at my high school in
Brooklyn. As interested as the parents were in what the man had
to say about the college, it was clear that they were needlessly
concerned that if their kids chose St. John’s, they wouldn’t be
able to get into medical school. To them, it was, perhaps, too
unconventional a place that was following a curriculum they
perceived as too far from the norm to be recognized by
professional schools as providing a legitimate education.
But for many other people, St. John’s was and stiU is the very
best form of undergraduate education, a chance to immerse
oneself in the most important ideas of our civihzation.”
St. John’s College • Fall 2008 }
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Levan Hall
Plans
Approved
Building in environmentally
sensitive Santa Fe is never an
easy feat, but the college’s longawaited center for the Graduate
Institute, Levan Hall, has made
its way through the city’s
extensive review and permitting
process, and building should
begin in the spring. A gift from
Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74)
made the project possible.
The first step, approval from
the City of Santa Fe Planning
Commission, was achieved in
June. The next hurdle was
cleared July aa, when the board
approved a height exception
(the building is 39 feet at its
tallest, compared to the
regulation 16 feet), but required
college officials to return for
approval of additional design
features, including some varia
tion in design from surrounding
buildings, and the architect’s
use of COR-TEN, a resilient
steel designed to weather to a
pleasing copper color. The
review board approved the
college’s plans on Sept. a3.
Levan Hall is being designed
With
plans approved, the college should begin
Levan Hall
CONSTRUCTION NEXT SPRING.
to achieve a silver rating in the
United States Green Building
Council LEED rating system.
Reading List
CHANGES
In with Medea, out
with the Rat Man
The Instruction Committees on
each campus have made some
changes to the work in progress
that is the seminar reading list.
In Santa Fe, where the
committee focused on
All in the GI Family
Two GENERATIONS OF THE ThOMAS/GrOENENDYKE FAMILY, SHOWN WITH
President Michael Peters (l.), graduated from the GI last May.
Abbie Thomas (not in regalia) received her degree in May in
Annapolis. Her mother, Cheryl Groenendyke, and Cheryl’s
HUSBAND, Richard (a BVG member), received their degrees a week
later in Santa Fe. Ms. Thomas was awarded a prize for her
preceptorial essay, “Rereading Proust,” an honor announced
AT the Santa Fe ceremony.
freshman and junior years,
some of the more significant
changes involve replacing
Plato’s Sophist with the
Protagoras, swapping “The
Two-Part Prelude of 1799” for
“Tintern Abbey,” and
replacing Euripides’
Hippolytas with the Medea.
All three replacement texts
have been on various reading
lists before, and it is likely that
all will appear again in the
future. One plan, adopted a few
years ago, was to alternate the
Sophist and the Protagoras on a
regular basis. Similarly, Medea
might likely find itself replaced
with another Euripides play,
and “Tintern Abbey” could
give way to a different
Wordsworth poem.
To take the Sophist off the
reading list is “to lose a great
good,” says tutor Matt Davis,
but the Protagoras has its own
virtues. Considered one of
Plato’s most dramatic
dialogues, the Protagoras is a
literary masterwork offering
students an opportunity to
learn about Protagoras-the
representative of relativism-in
more than one dialogue
(Theaetetus being the other).
By studying the dialogues
together students learn
more about one of the most
important problems of our
(The College. St. John’s
College ■ Fall 2008 }
7
time. The dialogue also allows
greater insight into Socrates:
readers see him in a slightly less
saintly role and learn about his
relationship to the Sophists.
It has been about eight years
since Medea was on the
freshman reading list, Davis
estimates. Medea elicits
questions about the status of
the Greek heroes and about
mortals’ relations to the gods.
“Tintern Abbey” can present a
challenge in seminar due to its
brevity, but one virtue in
reading shorter texts is the
opportunity for a deeper, more
leisurely conversation.
In Annapolis, freshmen will
have two seminars on De
Anima, with their Lucretius
seminars moving to sophomore
seminar. This exchange undoes
a long-standing, but anom
alous, departure from the
rough chronological order that
prevails through most of the
reading list. Annapolis Dean
Michael Dink (A75) says, “it is
hoped that freshmen will
benefit from bringing the three
major Aristotle readings
together: Physics, Metaphysics,
and De Anima. The other
changes all followed the
principle that any author
worthy of being on the
Program is worthy of at least
two seminars.”
That means in sophomore
year, a second seminar will be
read on Calvin. Seniors will
have two seminars on Faulkner,
with additional selections from
Go Down, Moses, and two
seminars on Heidegger’s Intro
duction to Metaphysics, instead
of one on “What is Philos
ophy?” Removed from the
reading list are Rabelais’
Gargantua and Pantagruel in
sophomore year. Sacrificed in
senior year: Flannery
O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back”
and Freud’s “Notes on a Case
of Obsessional Neurosis” (Rat
man).
�{From the Bell Towers}
8
News & Announcements
New Tutors
The following tutors have
joined the Santa Fe faculty:
Arcelia Rodrigue/,
received her BA, MA, and PhD
in Government and Politics
from the University of Mary
land, College Park.
Her areas of special interest
include political philosophy
and international relations.
Seth Braver received his
MA in Mathematics from the
University of California at
Santa Cruz and his PhD in
Mathematics from University of
Montana. Before coming to
St. John’s Braver was adjunct
associate professor at the
University of Montana.
Topi Heikkero received his
MA (Theoretical Philosophy)
and MTh (Theological Ethics
and Philosophy of Religion)
from the University of
Helsinki, Finland. He special
izes in the ethics of technology
and the philosophy of tech
nology.
Llyd Wells received his BA
in Natural Science and Ancient
Near Eastern Studies from The
Johns Hopkins University, and
his MS and PhD in Oceanog
raphy from the University of
Washington, Seattle. Before
coming to St. John’s, Wells
held a Mellon postdoctoral
fellowship at the University of
Pennsylvania, and was scholar
in-residence at Sterhng
College, Vermont.
Annapolis welcomed the
following tutors:
Michael J. Brogan earned a
PhD in Philosophy from
Villanova University, where he
also earned his master’s
degree. He was a visiting
researcher at the Catholic
University of Louvain in
Belgium and earned his bach
elor’s degree at Swarthmore
College.
Matthew S. Linck joins
St. John’s from The New School
of Social Research, where he
was an adjunct professor in the
New School for General
Studies. He has also taught in
the honors program of Long
Island University, SUNY’s
Purchase College, and New
York University. He is author of
The Ideas ofSocrates (London:
Continuum, 2007). He earned
a BEA in Painting at Syracuse
University.
Marcel Andrew Widzisz
earned a PhD in Classics from
the University of Texas at
Austin, where he also earned
his master’s in Greek Litera
ture. He earned three bach
elor’s degrees from Southern
Illinois University: in Classics,
French, and Philosophy.
A visiting tutor in the
Graduate Institute this fall,
Sarah Benson earned a BA in
Philosophy at Pennsylvania
State University, an MA in
Comparative Literature from
the University of Texas, and a
PhD in the History of Art from
Cornell University.
Members
New BVG Members
The college’s Board ofVisitors
and Governors welcomed these
members:
John M. Belcher is the
Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer of ARINC Incorpo
rated. He has more than
30 years of experience in the
aviation, information tech
nology, and defense industries,
and is a leading authority in
aviation and air traffic services.
Stephen Jon Bohlin (SF81)
retired recently after a long
investment career with
Thornburg Investment
Management in Santa Fe.
He also serves on the New
Mexico State Treasurer’s
Investment Committee as a
public member.
Michele C. Farquhar is a
partner at Hogan and Hartson
law firm in Washington, D.C.
She is a member of the Cali
fornia and Washington, D.C.,
bar associations and is on the
board of trustees at her alma
mater, Duke University.
Jana Howard Carey retired
as a Partner at Venable, LLP, in
December 2003 after 26 years
of law practice. She is an active
of the aikido club go through their moves as part of a
STUDENT activities FAIR EARLIER THIS SEMESTER.
{The College -St. John’s
College ■ Fall 2008 }
community leader in Maryland.
Richard A. Groenendyke,
Jr. (SFGI08) recently retired
after a 35-year career in the law.
Most recently, he was a share
holder and senior litigator with
Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable,
Golden & Nelson,
Attorneys at Law, in Tulsa,
Oklahoma.
John C. Jeeferies, Jr.
recently stepped down as dean
of the University of Virginia
School of Law. He is a member
of the bar in both Virginia and
the District of Columbia.
Awards
In October, Annapolis
Treasurer Bronte Jones was
one of six recipients of the
Fannie Lou Hamer Award,
named for the groundbreaking
civil rights leader. Presented by
the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Committee, the award recog
nizes women who continue
Hamer’s efforts. Jones was also
accepted to the HERS Institute
at Wellesley College.
The Arts Council of Anne
Arundel County earlier this fall
presented Annie Awards to
Lucinda Edinberg, art
educator for the St. John’s
Mitchell Gallery, and Anna
Greenberg (HA96), honorary
member of the college’s Board
ofVisitors and Governors.
Edinberg was named Arts
Educator of the Year, and
Greenberg was recognized as
Arts Patron of the year.
The Epoch Journal,
a magazine on current affairs
published by Annapolis
students, was named a finalist
in the American Collegiate
Press’ 2008 Magazine
Pacemaker Award, which
recognizes excellence in
student journalism. For more
about the Epoch, visit the
publication’s website:
http://news.
epochjournal, org/.-^
�{Letters}
A Loss FOR THE COLLEGE
On a hot summer day in 1997,
Chris Colhy (HA08) showed
me how to use the most
intimidating machine in the
Print Shop: an industrial-grade
paper cutter, armed with a hlade
powerful enough to sever a
hand. 1 stiU recall Chris’ patient,
soft-spoken manner when he
explained how to operate the
menacing machine. Thankfully,
for my sake, the machine had a
fail-safe method of operation,
requiring the use of hoth
hands to trigger the cutting
mechanism.
1 had the privilege to know
and work with Chris, not while I
was a student, hut after I gradu
ated. For a year, before 1 went to
law school, 1 was a hookmaker,
among other things, at the
Touchstones Discussion Project,
which required my almost daily
presence at the Print Shop.
Chris trained me in the art of
paper cutting, binding, and
copying. Soon, not only did 1
lose fear of operating copying
machines, I also became part of
Chris’ Print Shop family, and my
tedious work became much
more enjoyable.
During my time at the Print
Shop, Chris and 1 had many
conversations about pretty much
every subject. 1 recall one partic
ular anecdote he related about
his grocery shopping habits,
which 1 try to practice to this
day. He recommended going to
the store with specific meals in
mind so as not to overspend or
buy on impulse, thus defeating
the expectations of the grocers.
Chris had a rebellious streak in
him. He said, in his matter-offact way, that one saved much
money that way. After threeand-a-half years of St. John’s
(1 was a Febbie), 1 appreciated
Chris’ real-world savoir-faire.
While Chris.. .was unable to
finish college, he was well-read,
knowledgeable and informed. In
his time at the college, he had
caught the “Great Books bug,”
having read many of the books
Christopher Colby (HA08)
students read, which always
made for pleasant conversation,
as we discharged our respective
duties and tried to drown out
the repetitive noise of the
printing presses and the
copiers. Chris also enjoyed an
unexpected perk from the tutors
who came every day with mate
rial to copy for their classes.
Chris would keep an extra copy
of any material that interested
him (short stories and poetry in
particular) and would read them
at his leisure.
I last saw Chris during my 10year reunion in aooy. He
showed me the many improve
ments in equipment and tech
nology that he had accom
plished since I had left. As we
toured the Print Shop, I could
not help but think how proud
Chris was of the changes that
had occurred. He had brought
the Print Shop from the Guten
berg years to the aist century.
Chris was a humble, loyal and
dedicated member of the college
community. I am not only
saddened about his death,
but also about the loss for
the college.
Juan Villasenor (A97)
Applauding TheLogic of
Desire
I recently read and was
entranced by.. .Annapolis tutor
Peter Kalkavage’s The Logic of
Desire: An Introduction to
Hegel’s Phenomenology....
The book is a remarkable
embodiment of the teaching art.
Kalkavage creates a living
joining of inwardnesses, which
he is able to awaken and hnk in
a remarkable way; the inward
ness of Hegel’s written words,
his own inwardness as medi
ating presence, and the inward
ness of the reader. The paradox
to me was that when I’m able to
teach like this, it’s because I can
stand in the thing to be under
stood and in the particular
embodied learning soul of the
student before me and adapt
what I say to the way that
student learns, while watching
aU the time not only what the
student says but the modulation
in the student’s eyes, opaque or
melting to insight, resistant or
ardent. Kalkavage does the
same thing, but without the
individual student before him.
Yet he addresses the reader in
such a way as to reach a wide
array of individual readers. His
book is a model of this art.
Kalkavage writes, “Commen
taries on the Phenomenology
tend to give the reader a
summary of its conclusions and
teachings, often brilhantly,
without necessarily helping him
become a better reader of
Hegel’s book.” Becoming a
better reader of Hegel’s book
means to be able “to make sense
of things from the inside as they
unfold.” [This] points to a
deeper effect of Kalkavage’s way
of shaping our experience of
reading his book.
Let me try to say succinctly
why this is so by starting with a
comparison. Ifyou read John
Bunyan’s great narrative. The
Pilgrim’s Progressfrom This
World to That Which is to
Come, you will be able to share
in the immediate experience of
Christian as he moves from one
crisis of Christian growth to
maturity after another. This is
aimed to support more of an
inner transformation of the
reader than a doctrinal
summary of Christian teaching
might do.
Similarly, Hegel wrote The
Phenomenology ofSpirit to
enable the reader to share in the
{The College ■ St. John’s
College ■ Fall aoo8 }
9
immediate experience of spirit
through its intrinsic and neces
sary sequence of stages and
transitions as it moves through
one crisis of growth after
another toward its complete
realization. In helping us
become better readers of Hegel,
Kalkavage stays within the
perspective of spirit at each
point of its unfolding as Hegel
represents it. In this way we are
helped to pace and share an
unfolding that is also happening
in each of us. Thus Kalkavage’s
commentary, as Hegel intends,
supports a self-reflection that
helps us discover who we are.
Such more than personal yet
also personal self-reflection as
this enables is a great gift.
Where do I find myself in
Hegel’s great gallery of arche
types of stages of spirit’s self
consciousness? Master? Slave?
Stoic? the Unhappy Conscious
ness? Rameau’s Nephew?
Beautiful Soul? Or any of the
many other archetypal states of
consciousness? I will confess
only that I recognize myself only
part of the way along the course
of spirit to maturity and no
doubt as I read I reduce Hegel’s
description of what is ahead to
fit the lens of my present
consciousness of self and the
world. Nevertheless, I’m
grateful that I found myself,
almost by accident, among “the
courageous non-specialists” for
whom Kalkavage writes.
Richard Freis (class of ig6i)
The College welcomes letters
on issues of interest to readers.
Letters may be 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. Letters
can be sent via e-mail to
Rosemary.Harty(@sjca.edu.
�{The Program}
IO
FROM FRESHMAN
TO JOHNNIE
Interviews by Sara Luell (Aog)
AND Jenny Hannifin
he College posed this ques
tion to members of the
Class of 2011: Was there a
moment during your first
year when you felt like you
really became a Johnnie?
Their answers were as individual as their
own personal experiences have been at
St. John’s, but also reflective of the
college as a community of learners.
Hein Myatt, Santa Fe. “It was definitely the moment I first
spoke in seminar. It took me a long time to speak up; it was
very challenging for me. I’m from Burma, and we didn’t have
these kinds of discussions in school. I wondered: ‘what if I say
something really stupid in front of the class?’ My tutor,
Ms. [Janet] Dougherty, was very encouraging. She said,
‘everyone says stupid things at times; you say them, and then
you can learn from them.’ So, when we were talking about the
Odyssey, I was moved by it, and I finally spoke. From there, it
got a lot easier.”
{The College*
Jake Simon, Annapolis. “I really became a Johnnie when I
realized how deep the Program was, during freshman essay
writing. When I was writing on The Sophist^ I turned in a
rough draft to my language tutor. She told me just to reread it
with a question in mind. WTien I was rereading it, I realized
that there is so much more going on than I thought was
possible. And then I was like, ‘Oh wow, aUofthe Plato that I’ve
read, I haven’t read it at all.’ Then feeling that I could spend
years going over just this book. The Sophist, just with one
question in mind. It makes you feel incredibly impotent, going
up against these great minds.”
Natasha Barnes, Santa Fe. “There are so many little times
when an experience allows you to step outside of yourself for a
second and say, ‘Oh wow! I’m really a part of this.’ It usually
hits you right after a class. You’re so engaged when you’re in
the class, so if you’re going to have a great experience it’s
because you aren’t thinking about other things in the middle
of it. You get out of seminar and start talking to people about
it, and all of a sudden you think‘Oh my gosh! This is crazy! I’m
in the middle of this, which is exactly why I wanted to be here.
So that I could have this kind of experience.’ I feel like [as a
freshman] you feel something starting, because it’s really a
longer process. Because you’re never aware that it’s actually
happening until later in the year: you realize that something
has changed from when you first got here. That now you’re not
looking at this community of thinking, you’re in the middle
St. John’s College * Fall 2008 }
�{The Program}
of it as much as anybody else is.
And that happens throughout
the whole year.”
Freshmen still have to contend
WITH their first DON RAG, BUT AT
LEAST “running THE GAUNTLET” IS
ONE FRESHMAN EXPERIENCE TODAY’S
STUDENTS don’t HAVE TO ENDURE,
AS THESE Johnnies did in 194a.
Lucy Ferrier, Annapolis. “I
think the first time that I sort of
became aware that I belonged
was coming home from Thanks
giving break. Coming back to
the campus, I felt like I was
coming home. You have to be
away to appreciate it. Everyone
was running up to me saying,
‘Hi, how are you?’ I was back
with people I knew, everyone
knew who I was, I knew where
my stuff was and where my life
was based.”
After years of self-identifying as
a liberal arts major. I’ve discov
ered a deep love for lab tutorial.
The study of grammar now
beguiles me, instead of boring
me. I even like Ptolemy. I did not
expect to love the Program itself
as much as I do, even as I find I
do not love the culture of the
school, the culture that brought
me here.”
Anne Deger, Santa Fe.
“Although my feelings about
being a Johnnie changed over
the course of the first year, at
the end of the first seminar,
sitting around the table, I
definitely experienced an ‘I’ve
come home’ feeling. But I think
the most compelling momentof-Johnnieness I’ve had has
come this year, after talking to
freshmen. I feel more a part of it
now that I’m introducing other
people to St. John’s, so perhaps
it just took a while to find my
place. I am an older student, and this may be part of the
problem. I’ve been disappointed in the lack of rigor I see in
some of my fellow students, though I hope that much of this
may be attributed to the process of growing up. And that
learning to live in a community takes time.
Still, that’s a poor excuse for skipping readings or coming to
class stoned. My ovm expectations of the school varied as
wildly from the college’s nature as my classmates’ natures. I’m
happy to have had some of those expectations proven false.
{The College-
Nathaniel Torrey, Annapolis.
“I would say the moment when I
really felt like I was ‘in the club’
was the night I turned my
freshman essay in. As soon as
that seminar was over, I was in it
to win it. From then on I was
like, ‘I made it.’ Because every
thing else was a weird freshman
trial at the college, it was so
unknown. I felt like I had done
the big thing that everyone else
does every year. I wasn’t just a
freshman who had just shown
up. I had actually proven my
mettle, I fought, and I deserved
to be here.”
Nareg Seferian, Santa Fe. “‘Does it bother anyone else that
these figures can be conceptualized, but not visualized?’ Thus
spoke a classmate, as we were starting Euclid. No, the circle or
triangle, as he describes it, simply cannot exist in ‘the real
world’ (whatever that is). We can think of it, though, think in
terms of it, work with it, prove things with it. I think all the
time, about all sorts of things, but there come these moments-
St. John’s College • Fall 2008 }
�la
{The Program}
Tutor William Darkey
leads a math
ematics TUTORIAL FOR THE FIRST
FRESHMEN IN SaNTA Fe, IN I964. HoW
MANY FRESHMEN LEARNED TO LOVE MATH
BECAUSE OF EuCLID?
and I’ve had a fair few at St. John’s already over the past six
months-where one is compelled to be extra pensive. It’s invig
orating and refreshing. ‘Good for the soul’ is a classic way of
expressing it. This ‘antiquarian’ sense that comes with
St. John’s is reinforced in Santa Fe by an idyllic setting: nestled
amidst hills, with arcades of pillars supporting a small commu
nity of learning. Some may criticize the philosophy behind the
college, and in response to that, all I can say is this: St. John’s
is indeed not for everyone, but it fulfills the function of filling
the very unique gap it fills, for those who yearn for just such a
place. That’s what it does for me, anyway.”
Dave Maher, Annapolis. “The first time I realized I was a
Johnnie was the first time in seminar when I realized that
someone hadn’t done the reading, and it made me very, very
angry. The college is essentially a communal effort to come to
learning and these people were not doing their part.”
{The College.
Anna Goold, Annapolis. “Before
I got here I had a different view on
what I thought a Johnnie was. I just
assumed that all my classes and all
my seminars would be perfect, that
we would get somewhere with all of
them, and we would come to great
conclusions. I think that changes
when you start having classes that
aren’t that way, and you realize that
everyone is struggling through
everything. That was the big differ
ence for me, when I felt like I
belonged here. It probably was by
the end of the first semester
freshman year, when I was able to
differentiate between it being just
seminar and it being awesome.
Being able to look at each problem
we were discussing, whether it was
good or bad, whether I thought it
was going somewhere or not,
whether I thought it was perfect or
not. I think a lot of people [come to
the same conclusion]. For a lot of
us, this was the only school we
applied to and we worship it as this
ideal institution. It is kind of when
we realize it is not ideal that we realize we are just people
grasping at ideas.”
Kyouhee Choi, Santa Fe, “Was there a moment when I felt
like I really became a Johnnie? Sure. When I balanced a
seminar chair. When we do Archimedes, we learn about
balance. There’s a saying that seniors have: if you can balance
the seminar chair, you’ll graduate, and if you can’t, you won’t.
I knew that it was stupid and not true, but it irked me anyway.
So I was really relieved when I balanced the chair. I even took
a picture.”
Martin Greenwald, Annapolis. “I think it was in the period
of the couple of seminars before winter break, when we were
reading Thucydides and the Republic, when the workload had
picked up, and our seminars picked up. Everyone settled into
their routine, everyone got what was going on. One big thing
St. John’s College . Fall 2008 }
�{TheProgram}
[about being a Johnnie] is being able to take the attitude we
have in seminar and try to cultivate that in everyday conversa
tion, try to bring the respect and open-mindedness of seminar
to conversation anywhere. Always looking at a text for what it
is worth, without prejudging it beforehand. Trying to get a
coherent view of the Western canon and our civilization, and
where it’s been and where it is taking us.”
Han Qi, Santa Fe. “One who has gone to a normal college
probably would never think of college as personal and humane
as St. John’s. I certainly never did. From my experience, when
a student registers for four courses at a generic school, four
professors each demand a considerable portion of his time
according to some regimented syllabus, expecting him to
produce projects almost every other day-a five-page interpre
tation of a Shakespeare sonnet on Monday; a Microeconomics
presentation, Tuesday; a quiz on Spanish verb forms,
Wednesday; and on Thursday, he is supposed to know the
difference between Paul’s messages to the Corinthians and the
Romans.
Students at work in a freshman laboratory
STUDENTS STILL READ GaLEN AND HaRVEY.
class, circa 1945.
The
{The College.
13
It is sheer madness. At St. John’s there are fewer readings in
mathematics, language and laboratory classes, but more focus
and more time to reflect and remember. Tutors let students
digest rather than devour. A school does not become personal
just by having a small pool of students. It has to give students
space and time to connect their learning with their life. The
moment I felt I became a Johnnie was in my first don rag. A
tutor criticized me for being overly prepared. Something as
singular as this has only happened to me at St. John’s, and I am
convinced that for a place so special, you cannot prepare to be
ready. You must be here in person to experience it.”
Matt Hendershot, Annapolis. “It sort of came gradually,
after winter break, maybe, when you’re coming back onto
campus, and you’re no longer a novelty. You’re no longer some
little freshman, wide-eyed and rubbernecking, talking about
how excited you are about the Program. You’re still excited
about the Program, but you are excited to be a part of it, now.
You’ve faced down your first don rag, sat in real open-faced
criticism ofyourself andthe wayyou conduct yourself. There’s
a lot of overblown talk
about how it is all about
finding a personal philos
ophy, or coming to rest at
home in the classics, but
plenty of people do that
without ever being John
nies.
What really makes you a
Johnnie is the fact that you
are here with all sorts of
other people that really
want the same thing out of
life and out of their educa
tion. You and the people
around you really come to
accept that when you’ve
made it through that first
semester. It can be tough. I
know my class lost a few,
even in the first couple
weeks. So I feel like you are
really here to stay, and
people sort of know that
when you step off the plane,
and you come back, and it is
like coming back home.”
labs may be more modern, but
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{books}
14
THE BOOK THAT
CHANGED
MY LIFE
he College asked alumni to to me about the anti-historical approach that the Program
describe a book that was represented.
I did not return to the college that fall. I did manage to
important in their lives. What resolve my dilemma, as it were, and returned to St. John’s
we received in return were the following fall, to graduate three years later with my
stories of career paths found, “new” class of 1954. But Spengler has remained the single
greatest influence in my life. He gave me a context in which
dilemmas resolved, passion I could comprehend various stages, or the ‘development’ of
and purpose discovered, faith strengthened,
a particular people (for example, the Greeks, or time, or
how
to imagine what Beethoven’s late quartets meant in our
and questions answered.
T
“A
Fruitful Tension”
Edward Bauer (Class of 1954)
I spent the summer after my freshman year at St. John’s
(1949-50) at home, trying to come to terms with the
Program’s total absence of “historical background,” which
of course is an issue of critical importance for the Program.
I don’t remember how I came upon Oswald Spengler’s huge
work. The Decline ofthe West. But I soon became convinced
that a broad knowledge of the history of an era (or of a work
of literature, or a particular architecture or art form, etc.)
was absolutely necessary for understanding it. Since I felt
that so strongly, I did not see how I could return to St. John’s
in the fall. I wrote to Mr. [Jacob] Klein, the dean, and tried
to explain my decision, and I will always be grateful to
him for his understanding and for taking the time to write
{The College-
earlier Western culture). I also understood howwhat we are
experiencing now in the late stages of Western civilization
is one more historical example of the birth, growth,
achievement, and decline-the biological analogy, in a
word-of a particular cultural entity.
In a very real way, my whole life has exemplified this
tension between historical and anti- (or un-) historical. I
would like to believe it has been a fruitful tension.
“A Meaningful
Life”
Isaac Smith (A03)
I tend to date the point when I stopped being a teenager and
started to become an adult to the time I was reading Middle
march in junior seminar. Middlemarch being, of course, the
great novel of dashed hopes and bruised idealism. It had
been a few months after the September ii attacks, and I was
coming to grips not only with my own mortality (the passage
when Casaubon stares death in the face is one of the novel’s
St. John’s College - Fall 2008 }
�{books}
high points) but with my own anonymity, the knowledge
that all my deeds, thoughts, and high ideals would be
swallowed up by time and forgotten. As a result, I strongly
identified with Dorothea, Ladislaw, and Lydgate, and their
attempts to carve out a meaningful life for themselves even
if the results weren’t what they intended. For similar
reasons, I also fell in love with Milan Kundera’s The
Unbearable Lightness of Being-'which in its own way
grapples with the same themes.
BOOKS HAVE THE POWER TO INFLUENCE OUR LIVES, EVEN WHEN We’rE
NOT AWARE OF IT AT THE TIME.
school, which turned me into quite a little snot until
St. John’s classes and discussion thankfully beat that out of
me. My first big-people book was War ofthe Worlds by H.G.
Wells when I was 8, so that set the stage for everything.
“The Question
“Watching Stars and Planets”
of
Opportunity”
Jennifer Hoheisel (AGI89)
by Dave Prosper (SF02)
I suppose an actual Program book that changed my life
would be Ptolemy’s Almagest. As wrong as he turns out to
be, I found his descriptions of how to watch the sky
extremely useful, and thus I tend to stay up watching stars
and planets and debating if I should just ditch the
computer-job thing and become an astronomer. Then I
remember that my math skills are lacking and decide
against it.
There was also Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World.,
which was a nice skeptical smack in the brain. I realized
that my weird dreams when younger were just memories
of weird dreams and not weird memories of actual aliens
poking around in my room. I can blame a Johnnie by the
name of Whitley Strieber (A67) for that earlier confusion,
thanks to Communion and his vivid descriptions of
naughty, nosy aliens. I also read The Prince and Johnny
Rotten’s autobiography simultaneously during high
{The College-
15
Before reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, I
hadn’t really thought about the fact that for centuries many
women were in a cycle of constant pregnancy and childbirth
that left little energy or brain power to do much that was
academic. Personally I was in no frame of mind to do philos
ophy for at least a few months after each of our two sons was
born-although I know women who feel otherwise. The cycle
of frequent childbirth also was bound to interrupt the studies
of those few women who did have access to higher education.
All of this helps to explain why we don’t have many works
from women prior to the advent of birth control and the
opening of many institutions of higher education in the 20th
century. (I know there are exceptions; I was writing a disser
tation about a 14th-century female mystic when I was in grad
school at Georgetown.) Woolf’s book speaks about the
need for women to have both the time and the financial
independence to be able to write.
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{books}
l6
Y discovered thepower ofsheltering myselfinside a story
Erin Martell (A98)
Not only did the book cause me to think
about texts from women, it also made me
realize how few women had been part of
my higher education to that point. As an
undergraduate majoring in Classical
Civihzation at the College ofWilliam and
Mary, I never had a female professor, and
at St. John’s, all my tutors were male. I am
not saying that there is anything inher
ently different about male and female
scholars; rather, it made me think again
about the question of opportunity. In my
own family, my extremely bright grand
mother was sent to work in order to send
her brother-a man who took seven years
and didn’t finish the degree-to college.
In the next generation, my mother was
given the opportunity to go to college and
was expected to excel, but her parents then assumed that she
would marry, raise a family, and not work outside the home.
When my sister and I arrived, we were expected to go to
college and establish ourselves doing what we loved before we
even thought about marriage. It was quite a difference
among the three generations.
Woolf’s book caused me to think about all these issues
related to scholarship and opportunity for the first time. It
made me appreciate anew my room in Humphrey s Hall and
the luxury of time to read and read deeply.
“A Profound
Experience”
Erin Martell (A98)
One of the first “big kid” books my mother read me was The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Order triumphed over
chaos and I discovered the power of sheltering myself inside
a story. I tore through the remaining books as fast as my
newly-learned-to-read brain could process. I read This
PresentDarkness\3y Frank E. Peretti at a time in my life when
I was seeking the answer to a question I didn’t even know I
had. As I finished the book, I realized with sudden clarity
that I couldn’t accept the religious precepts I’d been taught,
their fundamental contradictions caused my constant
struggle against the church, and that it was time to give up,
be free and figure out what I believed on my terms. Last, as it
{The College-
A Room OF One’sOwklw Jennifer Hoheisel
(AGI89) TO THINK ABOUT women’s
OPPORTUNITIES.
was for many others. War and Peace
was a profound experience for me. I
don’t think I captured the thoughts quite
right in my senior paper, hut the idea
that difficult things are worth doing
and worth surviving even if the surviving
is all you have in the end has stayed
with me.
“Challenged and
Transformed”
Laura Anne Stuart (A93)
When I was a sophomore in Santa Fe, I
came upon the book Angry Women while browsing at a
record store in town. This book contains interviews with
women artists, activists, and writers, most notably sexuality
educators Annie Sprinkle and Susie Bright. My view of femi
nism and female sexuality was challenged and transformed,
and I began to think that the field of sexual health might he
where my passions lay. It hadn’t even occurred to me before
then that it could he a job!
While at St. John’s, I followed my passion by co-coordinating the Women’s Literature Study Group and organizing
trips to Washington, D.C., to attend the 1992 March for
Women’s Lives and the 1993 March for Lesbian, Gay, and
Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. After graduating from
St. John’s, I earned my master’s degree in public health and
worked as a sexuality educator for more than a decade. This
year, I published a sex education curriculum for young adults
and became the proud owner of a sex toy store in Milwaukee,
the Tool Shed. When I finally met Susie Bright, she was
amused to know that one interview that she had given years
ago had started me on my career path. I spend a lot of time
teaching and mentoring young people and hope that I can
inspire someone in a similar way.
St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{books}
17
Ybelieve only authors are capable ofchanging our lives.
Christopher Benson
“A Lifetime’s
(SFGI07)
Christopher Benson says authors,
NOT books, have THE POWER TO
Pursuit”
Harrison Sheppard (Class of 1961)
CHANGE LIVES.
Plato’s Apology did not merely
change my life; it virtually formed
it. When I was 16, an uncle of
mine-who had introduced me to
“literature” when I was eight years
old with an eight-volume set of the
works of Edgar Rice Burroughsgave me a small volume containing
five of Plato’s dialogues: the
Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Sympo
sium, and Republic. I vividly recall
the moment, more than 50 years
ago, riding on a Philadelphia
subway train, when I finished my
first reading of the Apology. That
Socrates was willing to give up his life, defiantly, rather
than abandon the search for knowledge as he had been
pursuing it, had a stunning effect upon me, an effect that
was simultaneously thrilling and exalting. I left that train
transformed. It was a year later that I learned about
St. John’s College. But it was the Apology that awakened
me to a lifetime’s pursuit of self-knowledge in its deepest
sense, the difference between what appears to be and what
is, and living with integrity based upon one’s self-recogni
tion. Along with my experience at St. John’s, it also
accounts for my chosen professions as a lawyer and writer
and my enduring devotion to what one might yet learn from
reading Plato and his companions in “The Great Conversa
tion” (as Robert Hutchins termed it).
“In Search
of
Resonant Voices”
Christopher Benson (SFGI07)
To the shock of every Johnnie, no book has changed my fife! I
believe only authors are capable of changing our lives.
St. John’s was a transformative experience for me because the
institution facihtated an intimate encounter between reader
and author, an encounter that crosses time and culture. I read
in search of resonant voices. To borrow an insight from Ralph
Waldo Emerson, a resonant voice is “spoken over the round
world” but comes “home through open or winding passages.”
{The College-
It is a voice that I ought to hear,
that belongs to me, that vibrates on
my ear, consoling me when I am
downtrodden and guiding me when
I am lost. It is a voice of inex
haustible pleasure and needful
wisdom, never flattened by the
tyranny of time or the vicissitudes
of fife. It is a voice that treats my
dark inertia, risks my securities,
heals my hidden wounds, deepens
my faith, awakens my somnolent
imagination, expands my imper
fect sympathies, and shapes my
“final vocabulary.”
I am tempted to mention other favorite authors-Dante,
Shakespeare, Pascal, Thoreau, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Dick
inson, and Frost-hut I will discipline my list to include only
the resonant voices:
Jesus: His subversive wisdom and edifying teaching
inaugurate an upside-down kingdom-both in my soul and in
the world-where the low is brought high and the high is
brought low.
Saint Augustine: When the Bishop of Hippo authored his
autobiography. Confessions, he authored the biography of
every Ghristian. His prayers and tears are my prayers and
tears. His conversion is my conversion. He reminds me of a
terrible truth, “Without God, what am I to myself but a guide
to my own self-destruction?” Gonsequently, “nothing is
nearer to God’s ears than a confessing heart and a life
grounded in faith.”
Soren Kierkegaard: In Fear & Trembling, Philosophical
Fragments, and Works of Love, Kierkegaard goads me,
against my own sheepish obstinacy, in two directions: to
enter the prodigious paradoxes of the Ghristian faith and to
five the scandal of the Gospel.
G.S. Lewis: I read the apologetic works of Lewis-Mere
Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, The Great
Divorce, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, and The
Abolition of Man-tsot as an “outsider” who surveys the
St. John ’5 College • Fall 2008 }
�{books}
i8
''Thatfateful, rainy Saturday morning, I wanted something to read...
Valerie Pawlewicz (A89)
landscape before undertaking a difficult journey, but as an
“insider” who leaves the famiharity of the boat for a thrilling
deep-sea dive. The analogical imagination of Lewis turns the
Christian faith intelligible, challenging, and winsome. No
one has done a finer job of holding the Fact and Myth of Chris
tianity together. His translation of theology into the vernac
ular is magical, leaving me with goosebumps of wonder, just
as Lucy experienced when she first beheld Narnia.
“More than Thought”
Steven T. Brenner (SFGI83)
When at age 15, I read Albert Schweitzer—An Anthology
(edited by Charles R. Joy) I knew I’d been spared a lifetime
of susceptibility to the dogmas and pretenses of the world,
for which in return I would owe a lifetime debt of higher
endeavor. Schweitzer’s thought is more than thought; it is
heroically won conviction born of total engagement with
the mysterious condition in which we find ourselves. It
never ceases to challenge me to revolutionary change in my
own thought and way of life.
Until I discovered Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil
37 years later, I had no idea that such knowledge was avail
able to human beings in their mortal state. Overwhelming
as it is on first impression, a single reading of this human
and cosmic creation poem-the most profound, most
difficult, most beautiful work I know-barely contains a
glimpse of its true riches. I still don’t understand a tenth of
it, but I know there’s nothing to fear.
“A
Second Chance”
Charles Green (AGoa)
Pride and Prejudice, in addition to being the funniest novel
I’ve ever read, also showed me the importance of giving
books a second chance. I first read the novel in loth grade,
and failed to see its point. Re-reading it during my junior
year in college, I was amazed at how accurately Jane Austen
captured aspects of myself in the main characters. I could
see that some days I’m Elizabeth Bennet, witty and
charming, while at other times I’m like Mr. Darcy, haughty
and isolating, and every once in a while. I’m a silly, shame
less flirt like Lydia Bennet.
{The College.
“The Wonder of Life”
Valerie Pawlewicz (A89)
A book that affected my life-although I didn’t know it at the
time-was a garden book called Making Things Grow by
Thalassa Cruso. She was a British gardener who hved in the
Boston area and in the 1960s and 70s had a gardening TV
show called-ta da!-“Making Things Grow.” In a bunch of
books my mother sent me when cleaning her house out about
IO years ago, in the middle of my busy life, I found this book
about keeping houseplants ahve. At the time I was working at
the Smithsonian, commuting, putting in intense hours, and
not quite content with the frenetic way of hfe in the Big City.
That fateful, rainy Saturday morning, I wanted something
to read, and on a whim, I opened this book. Inside I discov
ered a world of calm, of green living things, and good, plain
common sense. What surprised me was her delightful prose
style. It was like having breakfast with a good, enjoyable
friend. She would tell a story, give plant characteristics as if
they were people, throw in details about growing up in a
great house in England before World War II, explain what
she looks for in buying plants from a local nursery, and share
personal failures (growing gardenias) as well as successes
(growing almost anything else).
The reason that this book “changed my hfe,” as I see it
now, was that it inspired me to learn more about gardening.
I don’t grow many houseplants, and I don’t really work that
hard to maintain the ones that I do. But I have learned to
acknowledge my love of being outdoors and being with green
things as a worthwhile way to spend my time and earn my
money. I had always thought that working outdoors and
gardening was for other people, a waste of my education
beneath a “true” career. During the next 10 years, I took
courses on the side, experimented in my garden on sunny
weekends, and read more gardening books on rainy week
ends. Along the way I found other good garden writers like
Geoffrey Hamilton, Penelope Hobhouse, and Michael Dirr,
who add as much personality as information when they write.
Eventually, four years ago, I turned to gardening full-time
and now run my own personal gardening business, working
only with private residential clients to help them to infuse
something of themselves in their private gardens. I came to
gardening late in life, being too busy to realize it was okay to
be happy while I was busy. Now I have a business that is hard
St. John’s College • Fall 2008 }
�{books}
19
''From all sides, friends offered su^esfions ofbooks to read...
Christopher Sullivan {A89)
work but a delight. It involves my
brain and body equally. It requires
patience, research, labor, focus, art,
and lots of techne. I also work closely
with my clients to introduce them to
the wonder of life growing right
outside their door. For some clients, I
am the most regular person in their
lives-someone who knows about
their worries, their careers, their
doctor’s visits, their dogs, their chil
dren, their security codes, their birth
days, their art, and their opinions
about the upcoming election. I am
the only person in the lives of my
clients who knows their outdoor
spaces as well as their personalities.
I don’t think I’ve actually read the hook in years-I just
remember the feeling I got the first time I opened it up and
became involved in her story. Now I feel I am living the book.
Thalassa would like that.
“Attending the Particular”
Alan D. Hornstein (AGI86)
Reading Vico’s Nuova Scienza in a preceptorial with [tutor]
Howard Fisher transformed my way of thinking. As the
product of American legal education and with a career as a
law professor, I had generally approached matters through
the manipulation of ahstractions-a thoroughly conceptual
approach not only to the life of the mind, hut to life itself.
Vico’s (and Fisher’s) insistence on attending the particular,
in all its singularity, was a revelation-one that I continue to
struggle with, hut which has also enriched my life and
understanding enormously.
“A Very
Metaphysical Place”
Christopher Sullivan (A89)
Following several sudden and unexpected deaths of people
close to me, I fell into a miserable depression revolving
around the fear of my own mortality and the mortality of
those dearest to me. From all sides, friends offered sugges
tions of hooks to read, people to talk to, workshops to take.
Law professor Alan Hornstein (AGI86)
FOUND A REVELATION IN ViCo’s NVOVA
Scienza.
mind-hody work to do, and medica
tions to take to try to lessen the hitter
sting of the depression. I read Viktor
Frankl, the Dalai Lama, Epictetus,
Lin Yutang, and so many more, hut
for months, no matter what I tried,
no matter how much wisdom from
throughout the ages I exposed myself
to, that grim, immohilizing fear held
its horrible grip.
Then in a slow process of distrac
tion that led me from gym workouts
to reading mystery novels and almost
everything in between, someone
recommended yet another book, one I’d never thought I
would read, though I’d heard of it-even thought of as a
joke!-foryears.
Surprisingly, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
offered the first chink in the depression’s armor that finally
let me begin to climb out and get back to my life. After
several chapters of vague and business-oriented ideas, in
chapter 15, he shifts into a very metaphysical place.
Addressing the fear of death, he reminds the reader that as
we learned in elementary physics, the entire world is made
up of only matter and energy. According to the concept of
conservation of energy, one can transform into the other, but
neither can be created or destroyed.
Suddenly my years of worrying and wondering about soul
and afterlife and reincarnation and death came to a peaceful
resolution. At death, I realized, whatever energy makes each
of us the person that we are loses its connection to our body,
but it is not lost or destroyed. From there, all those ideas
about “we are all one with the Universe” or “God is within”
or that life and death are an unending cycle came, finally,
into a clearer focus. Exactly what becomes of that energy,
that “soul,” remains a mystery, but I found it hugely
comforting to recognize that simple, physical, scientific
truth. And I’m immeasurably grateful.
{The College. St. John’s
College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{Musical Tutors}
MUSIC
in the
KEY OF LIFE
BY Deborah Spiegelman
AND Rosemary Harty
ach Friday afternoon,
after the last elass ends,
Annapolis tutors Carl
Page and Eric Stoltzfus
join with seven students
to sing sacred music.
From the Pendulum Pit,
the voices of Primum
Mobile send the beautiful
sounds of Palestrina’s “Missa Papae Marcelli”
resonating through Mellon Hall, a gift to
everyone else within earshot.
Around lunchtime on the Fishpond Placita,
Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney (A75) may be
found opening his guitar or banjo case, ready to
play and sing with any music lover who has the
time and inclination. Spontaneous dancing is
always welcome, too.
Just as conversation spills out of the classroom
at St. John’s College, music enlivens and unites
our college communities beyond the bounds of
freshman chorus and sophomore music tuto
{The College-
rial. Many talented tutors help make it possible:
through formal groups and polished perform
ances, community sing-a-Iongs and Collegium,
jam sessions, and musical mentorship to
students. The college is fortunate to have gifted
pianists in Elliott Zuckerman in Annapolis and
Peter Pesic in Santa Fe. On Wednesday evenings
in Annapolis, Peter Kalkavage leads a commu
nity chorus of students, staff, and tutors emeriti
that practices all year for a spring performance.
In Santa Fe, Phil LeCuyer and John Cornell
collaborated on “To Strike the World,” a
performance of orchestral music and spoken
word that brought together musical tutors and
students last December.
Among the tutors profiled in these pages are
individuals who found their passion for music
later in life and those who had early and exten
sive training. Several perform regularly as part
of professional music groups. Some compose,
one won’t sing, but all consider music one of the
great passions of their lives.
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{MuSICAlTuTORS}
2,1
"There s this tension between the intellectual and this wacko rock bass-playing
side ofme thatsjust been something Tve decided to negotiate all my lije. ”
Henry Higuera
It’s only rock ’n
{The College
roll but
St John’s College • Fall 2008 }
Henry Higuera likes
it.
�{MusicalTutors}
Long Live Rock______________________________
Henry Higuera
play lead guitar on some of his favorite rock songs. When he came
to St. John’s, he sometimes joined up with students who put on loud
concerts in the Coffee Shop. Marriage (to tutor Marilyn Higuera,
current director of the Annapolis Graduate Institute) and children
(Adam and Helen), along with the busy life of a tutor, meant his
instruments were often at rest in the basement.
Having a steady group of musicians and singers at the college
(with various membership over the years) has given him more
opportunities to play, and he’s always eager to strap on the Gibson
or the Fender for a concert.
“There’s this tension between the intellectual and this wacko
rock bass-playing side of me that’s just been something I’ve decided
to negotiate all my life,” says Higuera. “It’s so intense, it’s so loud.
The only thing more exciting than being at a concert is being
on stage five feet in front of your own large amphfier. You can see
how it can get in the way of other more refined pursuits you have in
your life.”
In tutor Henry Higuera, a rock star lurks beneath the surface.
Just watch him strum his Fender Telecaster, even when it’s not
plugged in, and you’U get a hint that here is a man on the verge of
rocking out.
In 1966, Higuera bought a bass guitar. (His first instrument was a
ukulele.) With his neighborhood friends in Evanston, Illinois, he
formed a garage band called the Knight Lords. They played songs
hke “Louie, Louie” and “Gloria” on second-hand instruments and
with amplifiers heldtogetherby duct tape. After listening to Beatles
songs on his transistor radio, Higuera learned that rock music
opened up to him in a whole new way when he first heard songs from
the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane on a good stereo.
“The songs to me sounded a million times better, and what made
the difference was the bass,” Higuera explains. “The bass sings
—Rosemary Harty
underneath the melody. It’s not obvious, but it gives the song its
structure.”
Fantasy for Violin____________________________
In junior high, Higuera invested $300 in his first quality bass, a
Christine Chen
Gibson EB-3. The Knight Lords never made the big time, but they
played teen clubs, parties and junior high dances. They were an
Santa Fe tutor Christine Chen’s proclivity for music became
enthusiastic group, Higuera remembers. “But we would have made
evident when she was quite young. Her instrument of choice was
a lot more money if any of us had been able to sing,” he says.
a Quaker Oats cereal box and her bow a ruler. “It was in the key of
Music followed Higuera to Cornell, where he earned his under
granola,
” she says ofher makeshift violin.
graduate degree. He joined a band of hippies that played in Ithaca’s
most popular bars, and Higuera was good enough to
consider pursuing music as a career. But watching
musician friends eke out a meager existence and
traveling from gig to gig made it all seem less
romantic. “It was really part of my identity, and I had
to rework that,” he says. “After junior year, I wasn’t
playing, but I always had the bass with me.”
At the University of Toronto, as a doctoral student
in political philosophy, he played music for fun with
housemates and friends. One of his professors was
Allan Bloom, author of The Closing ofthe American
Mind. “That book was based on an article he wrote
for the National Review, and I was his ‘big expert’ on
rock,” says Higuera.
Higuera tried to make a case that rock ’n roll was
about more than just sex and drugs; it could play a
powerful role in political reform. But by the time
Bloom began working on the book, Higuera was
“dethroned” as Bloom’s rock expert.
Santa Fe tutors David Bolotin and Christine Chen have performed together
Higuera was teaching at Dickinson College when SEVERAL times AT THE COLLEGE, BOTH AS A DUO AND AS PART OF A TRIO, IN WORKS FROM
he bought the Telecaster, a six-string that lets him Bach to Shostakovich.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Fall 2008 }
�{MusicalTutors}
Equipped with a more responsive instrument, she soon
embarked on a 13-year journey through the competitive world of
adolescent classical musicians. Under the tutelage of Eudice
Shapiro at the University of Southern California School of Music,
Chen seriously considered a career in music. “I thought long and
hard about conservatory, but I decided I’d rather have a liberal
arts degree,” she says.
While Chen earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at
Wellesley, Harvard, and Yale, her music remained a central part of
her life. She played in the first violin sections of the Yale
Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.
Her teachers included Nancy Cirillo of the New England Conser
vatory and Sidney Harth, former concertmaster of the Chicago
Symphony and professor at the Yale School of Music. As a doctoral
student at Cambridge University, Chen helped found the Rusalka
String Quartet.
When she spotted an ad for St. John’s tutor positions, Chen
thought, “this is really perfect for me.” That was more than three
years ago, and Chen has successfully fit music into the challenging
work of being a tutor at St. John’s. Weaving in the musical context
during seminar discussions is “a way of connecting disparate
parts of learning,” Chen suggests, adding with a laugh, “I prob
ably [do it] to an annoying extent.”
Chen has discovered that a surprising number of tutors play an
instrument, including a group that regularly plays bluegrass
music. Ensemble playing involves the “necessity of being better
attuned to the other musicians,” she observes. Along with
colleagues including David Bolotin, Chen played the viohn in the
2007 performance “To Strike the World.” Bolotin introduced her
to a 70-year-old cellist in town, which led to the formation of an all
female string quartet with seemingly unbounded energy for
music. In addition, Chen will soon appear with The Serenata of
Santa Fe, a professional chamber music group.
In a setting where the emphasis is on the mind, Chen finds it
refreshing to be able to step into the realm of music.The college,
she adds, has given her the encouragement and support to
perform in addition to teaching. “Music reminds me that there’s
something else besides what I’m doing,” she says. “It is deeply
important that a college has a sustained musical life.”
a3
“I always told myself that I’d return to the piano,” Bolotin says.
He began piano lessons at age 6. Music followed him to college,
but slowly receded to the background as lessons became increas
ingly sporadic. Engaging with academia more fully, Bolotin
thought his piano-playing days were over.
Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Bolotin earned a
doctorate at New York University and lectured in classics at Yale
before joining the Annapolis faculty in 1974. In 1981, he trans
ferred to the Western campus.
Four years ago, music reentered his life. “I saw an ad for a
digital piano, and then suddenly I had one,” Bolotin says. He
played casually for about eight months until a student showed
him a book of 17th-century songs. While Alexis Segal (SF05) set
about mastering the vocals, Bolotin accompanied her. Thor
oughly hooked, he resumed his long-discarded practice of regular
lessons and loved it.
Musical performance also found its way into a seminar on
Chekhov. When the discussion focused on a passage the class
found depressing, a student suggested that “in a musical, this
would be the cue for an upbeat song.” Bolotin challenged the
young man to write the piece. The student not only wrote it, but
also found a fellow student to present the song.
Bolotin has been taking lessons for more than three years from
Jacquelyn Helin, an internationally known classical pianist and
teacher who lives in Santa Fe. Since the auspicious digital-piano
purchase, Bolotin has acquired an upright piano as well as a
grand. “Two years ago, we remodeled our house to make a sound
proof piano studio out of our former one-car garage,” he adds.
What Bolotin really enjoys about music is the intimacy of
performing with others. Ensemble playing-collaborating with
both students and fellow tutors-is a source of deep satisfaction.
He was Segal’s accompanist in a recital this spring. “ She wouldn’t
take ‘no’ for an answer,” Bolotin recalls. Most recently, he joined
tutor Christine Chen and recent graduate Susanne Ristow (SF06)
in July in a performance of Brahms and Haydn piano trios in the
college’s Great Hall. “I’m so lucky to have a community to make
music with and a hall to do it in,” Bolotin says.
— Deborah Spiegelman
Deacon Blues
— Deborah Spiegelman
T. Andrew Kingston
Piano Man
David Bolotin
When Santa Fe tutor David Bolotin talks about music, his voice is
unmistakably reverential, which might have something to do
with his recent reunion with music after a hiatus of nearly 40
years.
{The College-
Four years ago, while awaiting the arrival of his moving van and
family from the East Coast, T. Andrew Kingston occupied himself
much as any new musician on the scene would: he found a blues
club in Santa Fe and became a fixture there-at least until it was
time to unload the truck.
St. John’s College • Fall 2008 }
�2'4
{MusicalTutors}
Raised in Chicago and Washington,
D.C., Kingston came to music through
classical training on the piano and his
parents’ influence. Both amateurs, his
father favored the church organ and his
mother lyric opera. In high school,
Kingston played various instruments in
school bands.
He credits two people with bringing
him to jazz; Miles Davis, whom he heard
in concert in 1981, and a teacher at
Kenyon College who was a jazz pianist.
Resuming regular piano lessons,
Kingston began exploring what many jazz
musicians insist is true American clas
sical music. During his junior year abroad
in Padua, Italy, he traveled with a local
blues group. At Boston University, his
graduate studies in an interdisciphnary
program combining the philosophy of
aesthetics and music were largely
financed by his blues and jazz gigs around
town.
While at BU, Kingston learned of a pianist and teacher proficient
on a wide range of instruments. Three years after putting his name
on Charlie Banacos’s waiting fist, Kingston began lessons. “He is a
great jazz educator,” Kingston says, and in a month of lessons, “he
changed my fife.”
Ultimately, the hard fife of a full-time musician wasn’t for him.
Instead Kingston returned to Kenyon to teach before becoming a
tutor at St. John’s in Santa Fe, where his musical and teaching fives
are well integrated. “Tfie seminar is like jazz interpretation,”
Kingston notes, sharing an observation made by a fellow tutor. The
greatest jazz musicians are those who can listen and work with
others, similar to seminar in that individual contributions create a
whole piece. Like jazz, the seminar moves along on interpretation
and improvisation.
Musical expression is a regular feature of campus fife, including
botfi scfieduled performances and spontaneous jam sessions.
Kingston offers piano lessons informally and has helped form a
number of jazz groups, alternately composed of students, tutors,
and local musicians. “There is a chance to work with the students
who are here,” he says, noting that an instrument that might not
fit, strictly speaking, into an ensemble presents an opportunity for
some innovative arranging.
Kingston has kept his hand in the music scene in Santa Fe (his
latest endeavor: salsa gigs), and is grateful for the freedom to play
{The College-
Like jazz, the seminar moves along on
INTERPRETATION AND IMPROVISATION, SAYS
Santa Fe
tutor T.
Andrew Kingston.
music at his own pace. “Music is a way of
talking about being human.”
— Deborah Spiegelman
Songbird
Judy Seeger
Judy Seeger is always singing.
The Annapolis tutor sings at home,
she sings in the car, she sings with
colleagues and students in formal
groups and impromptu gatherings.
When she gave the Commencement
speech in 2006, it was natural for her
to urge everyone to join her in a chorus
of “The Water is Wide,” even though
she was struggling with laryngitis.
There is no occasion, Seeger believes, that can’t be made more
joyful by adding a song.
“My mother tells me that I sang before I talked,” says
Seeger. Her earliest memories are of singing in her family’s
Pittsburgh home with her father, a Gulf Oil executive who
loved to play the piano. Seeger sang while her father played
music from Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, and others from
a collection of songs stashed in the piano bench. “Not Bach,”
she says. “My father was not a fan of Baroque music.”
As a child, she studied the piano, but like her father, she
always preferred to play in accompaniment to a song. A love of
music brought Seeger together with her husband, Tony, a
member of a musical family (folk singing legend Pete Seeger is
his uncle). The two met as youngsters in New York City, and in
their teens, they both attended the Seeger family’s Camp
Killooleet, where campers sing folk music and traditional
songs all summer long. Seeger also learned to play the acoustic
guitar at the camp.
“Music was one of the things that brought us together, and
it’s one of the things we keep on doing together,” she says.
Seeger earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and master’s
and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages and Literature
from the University of Chicago. Her husband became an
ethnomusicologist. Together they spent nine years in Brazil
St. John’s College • Fall 2008 }
�a4
{Musical Tutors}
Raised in Chicago and Washington,
D.C., Kingston came to music through
classical training on the piano and his
parents’ influence. Both amateurs, his
father favored the church organ and his
mother lyric opera. In high school,
Kingston played various instruments in
school bands.
He credits two people with bringing
him to jazz: Miles Davis, whom he heard
in concert in 1981, and a teacher at
Kenyon College who was a jazz pianist.
Resuming regular piano lessons,
Kingston began exploring what many jazz
musicians insist is true American clas
sical music. During his junior year abroad
in Padua, Italy, he traveled with a local
blues group. At Boston University, his
graduate studies in an interdisciphnary
program combining the philosophy of
aesthetics and music were largely
financed by his blues and jazz gigs around
town.
While at BU, Kingston learned of a pianist and teacher proficient
on a wide range of instruments. Three years after putting his name
on Charlie Banacos’s waiting list, Kingston began lessons. “He is a
great jazz educator,” Kingston says, and in a month of lessons, “he
changed my fife.”
Ultimately, the hard life of a full-time musician wasn’t for him.
Instead Kingston returned to Kenyon to teach before becoming a
tutor at St. John’s in Santa Fe, where his musical and teaching fives
are weU integrated. “The seminar is like jazz interpretation,”
Ki ngston notes, sharing an observation made by a fellow tutor. The
greatest jazz musicians are those who can listen and work with
others, similar to seminar in that individual contributions create a
whole piece. Like jazz, the seminar moves along on interpretation
and improvisation.
Musical expression is a regular feature of campus fife, including
both scheduled performances and spontaneous jam sessions.
Kingston offers piano lessons informally and has helped form a
number of jazz groups, alternately composed of students, tutors,
and local musicians. “There is a chance to work with the students
who are here,” he says, noting that an instrument that might not
fit, strictly speaking, into an ensemble presents an opportunity for
some innovative arranging.
Kingston has kept his hand in the music scene in Santa Fe (his
latest endeavor: salsa gigs), and is grateful for the freedom to play
{The College.
Like jazz, the seminar moves
along on
INTERPRETATION AND IMPROVISATION, SAYS
Santa Fe tutor T. Andrew Kingston.
music at his own pace. “Music is a way of
talking about being human.”
— Deborah Spiegelman
Songbird
Judy Seeger
Judy Seeger is always singing.
The Annapolis tutor sings at home,
she sings in the car, she sings with
colleagues and students in formal
groups and impromptu gatherings.
When she gave the Commencement
speech in aoo6, it was natural for her
to urge everyone to join her in a chorus
of “The Water is Wide,” even though
she was struggling with laryngitis.
There is no occasion, Seeger believes, that can’t be made more
joyful by adding a song.
“My mother tells me that I sang before I talked,” says
Seeger. Her earliest memories are of singing in her family’s
Pittsburgh home with her father, a Gulf Oil executive who
loved to play the piano. Seeger sang while her father played
music from Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, and others from
a collection of songs stashed in the piano bench. “Not Bach,”
she says. “My father was not a fan of Baroque music.”
As a child, she studied the piano, but like her father, she
always preferred to play in accompaniment to a song. A love of
music brought Seeger together with her husband, Tony, a
member of a musical family (folk singing legend Pete Seeger is
his uncle). The two met as youngsters in New York City, and in
their teens, they both attended the Seeger family’s Camp
Killooleet, where campers sing folk music and traditional
songs all summer long. Seeger also learned to play the acoustic
guitar at the camp.
“Music was one of the things that brought us together, and
it’s one of the things we keep on doing together,” she says.
Seeger earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and master’s
and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages and Literature
from the University of Chicago. Her husband became an
ethnomusicologist. Together they spent nine years in Brazil
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
J
�{MuSICALTuTORS}
living with the Suya Indians and studying the role of music and
song in their culture. In 1989, Tony joined the Smithsonian
Institution as Curator of the Folkways Collection and Director
of the Smithsonian’s Folkways Recordings, and Seeger joined
the St. John’s faculty.
The place of music at the college, both in and outside the
classroom, was one of the factors that drew Seeger to St.
John’s. “The whole college is a musical community,” says
Seeger. “Where else do all the freshmen sing?”
With Annapolis tutors Jon Tuck, Henry Higuera, and
Chester Burke, and Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney, Seeger is a
part of a continuing tradition called “Begone, Dull Care,” a
musical gathering meant to brighten the winter doldrums.
The event started at the behest of Eva Brann, who was looking
for an event to brighten the dark days between winter and
spring breaks. After a few experimental years-including a
performance in the Pendulum Pit with Seeger, tutor George
Doskow and then-music librarian Tina Davidson, the gath
ering found its home in the Great Hall. A folksy, high-spirited
community sing-along that takes place every winter in
Annapolis, “it lifts people’s spirits,” Seeger says.
A song has the unfailing power to get people to put aside
their individual pursuits and come together. “We do music at
St. John’s the way we read books,” she says. “You read the
book by yourself, butthat’s not the end ofit-it’s when we come
together and talk about it that the magic happens. It’s the
same way with music.”
— Rosemary Harty
as
Galloping on the Guitar
Chester Burke (A74)
Playing the pedal steel guitar takes more than just musical
ability, says Annapolis tutor Chester Burke (A74). It’s a feat of
coordination and concentration. Burke was first drawn to the
challenge by the sounds he heard in country music: a happy
twang, a mournful wail, a nameless longing, all produced by
masters of the steel guitar. But there’s great risk involved: when
played poorly, the steel guitar can produce some of the most
wretched sounds known to the human ear.
The pedal steel guitar has two necks, each with 10 strings. It
has seven pedals and five knee levers, which control the volume
and pitch of the string. With his right hand, Burke plucks the
strings with two finger picks and a thumb pick; the left hand
(instead of pressing against the fret on a guitar) moves the steel
“bullet” up and down the frets to raise and lower the pitch of
the notes he’s plucking out on the strings. “It’s many instru
ments in one instrument, and it takes longer than most instru
ments to master,” he says.
Burke has been a serious musician since childhood, starting
with the violin, cello, and piano before setthng on the flute as
an object of serious devotion. After graduating from St. John’s
he studied music and performed in Paris. He returned to the
states to earn a master’s degree in performance at the Univer
sity of Michigan. Since 1982 when he returned to the college,
initially as lab director, he has played the flute professionally as
a member of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra.
The steel guitar began to intrigue him, especially when he
became the temporary custodian to colleague Walter Ster
ling’s treasured collection of classic country music. “In the
country venue, the steel guitar is the instrument that best
accompanies the singer,” Burke says. “It best imitates the
emotions.”
Determined to play the difficult instrument, Burke took
lessons from one of the best in the business. Buddy Charlton,
who played with Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours. He
invested la years in lessons and practice before he was
comfortable performing before an audience, but he began
carting the instrument along with his flutes for concerts and
special events.
Burke is now turning his efforts to the acoustic guitar. So
far, he’s not producing the sounds he so admires in Andres
Even
if she wanted to,
SINGING.
{The CoLLEGE-5f. John’s
College ■ Fall 2008 }
Judy Seeger couldn’t keep from
�2.6
{MusicalTutors}
Segovia, but he’ll keep trying. “The sound of the guitar
intrigues me,” he says. “But it’s much harder to play than the
flute, and 1 feel I’ll never get very good at it.”
At St. John’s, every musician is fortunate to have receptive
audiences, whether it’s Purcell in the Great Hall or Crosby,
Stills, Nash and Young on the quad. “As audiences go, the
St. John’s community listens very well-we make a practice of
hstening to one another with respect and appreciation, and it’s
a pleasure to perform here,” Burke says.
And while he’s game to try almost any instrument, Chester
Burke will never sing. “I’m terrified of singing,” he says.
— Rosemary Harty
Practice Makes Perfect
Stephen Houser
Santa Fe tutor Stephen Houser routinely powered his habit of
practicing the guitar into the early morning hours with peanut
butter-and-jeUy sandwiches-but that’s getting ahead of the story.
Growing up in Lakewood, Colorado, Houser started taking
piano lessons at the age of five, received a guitar for Christmas at
ten but “didn’t do much with it,” and played oboe in the juniorhigh band. A high-school friend with an electric guitar was his
first musical influence. Together, they bowdlerized several
guitars to create their Frankenstein, dubbed “the Astrocaster.”
Houser later upgraded to a better
electric guitar, with which he dutifully
annoyed his family. During his first
semester at St. John’s in Santa Fe, he
met a fellow student who played clas
sical guitar. “I was mesmerized,” he
recalls. “He helped me choose a clas
sical guitar to buy, and I practiced my
brains out.”
Houser saved up money from a job
with the U.S. Postal Service and
invested in a steel-string guitar, a 1943
Martin. He dedicated his summer
after freshman year to music, prac
ticing IO hours every day, and made a
habit of daily practice through college
and after graduation. Returning home
in the evenings from his day job as a
paralegal, he would eat his sandwiches
and practice until he couldn’t keep his
eyes open.
But Houser “had an itch” to pursue music more seriously. So
he enrolled in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where
he studied, took master classes, and played in a bluegrass band
until the money ran out. Returning to Santa Fe, he taught guitar
and “on a lark,” applied to the college as a tutor. He joined the
faculty in August 1983.
Houser has been at St. John’s ever since, except for sabbaticals
and the 1987-1990 academic years, when he pursued his
doctorate in philosophy at the University of Virginia. He tried to
keep up practice, but it became too difficult as he became more
involved in extracurricular obligations at the college.
Music, however, continued to play a role in class discussions.
“I rely on the common experience that students-sophomores,
juniors, and seniors-have with music,” he says. “Music was a
very important part of my St. John’s experience [as a student]. It
was natural and easy for musical things to happen.”
Houser has collaborated musically with students and tutors,
including playing the lute with young singers and accompanying
a tutor who played the recorder. More recently, he has been
concentrating on the violin-guitar repertoire and currently is
partnering with a viohnist from Santa Fe Pro Musica on “enough
pieces for a concert.” He is hoping to reach beyond the St. John’s
audience to make a contribution to the community.
Houser also understands the soothing quality of music, having
in the past played guitar for the residents of nursing homes and,
most importantly, for his mother as
she battled a form of bone-marrow
cancer. When his mother moved to
Alaska to be cared for by Houser’s
sister, he sold his 1943 Martin and
bought recording equipment to make
CDs of his guitar music for his
mother’s solace.
After 25 years at St. John’s, Houser
consciously integrates music into
his fife as a tutor. “I want to make
some space for my music,” he
explains. On sabbatical for the 20082009 academic year, he will be doing
just that.
—Deborah Spiegelman
Annapolis tutor Chester Burke (A74)
PLAYS flute for the BALTIMORE
Chamber Orchestra, but says the
guitar is the hardest instrument he
has tried to learn.
{The College
s?.
John’s College • Fall 2008 }
�{MuSICAlTuTORS}
Johnnie Song Book
”" hen a group of St. John’s tutors performs
for special events, these two Johnnie clas
sics are showstoppers.
Tutor Henry Higuera wrote the
“Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters”
in the early 1990s, after someone
announced a contest for a new St. John’s anthem. Although the
contest never materialized, Higuera’s muse took over. “I was
idly amusing myself with various joke anthem ideas when all
these great lines from specific books started occurring to me,
all set to the tune of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’”
Higuera explains. “After about a year of this I showed it to some
seniors, and the rest is history.”
Tutor Jon TRick’s “The Western Canonball” was inspired by
both Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, published in 1995,
and a lively song about a train. “There was a certain pomposity
about the book that I found amusing,” says Tuck, who has
always liked Roy Acuff’s “The Wabash Cannonball.” “I put the
two of them together, and just started fiddling around with it.
My words are funnier when you know the original lyrics of
the song.”
Audiences love his booming, Opry-inspired delivery of the
song, but Tuck remains modest. He loves performing for college
events, big or small. “It’s a wonderful fringe benefit of being at
St. John’s,” he says. “You don’t have to be any good. I’m always
invoking what I call the Pyramus and Thisbe principle: the
worse you are the better you are.”
W
The Western Canonball
From the great Atlantic Ocean, from that European shore.
From Athens and Jerusalem come the authors we adore.
They’re dead and white and masculine, they’re known and loved
by all.
They’re the regular combination of the Western Canonball.
[Chorus: ] Oh, listen to the Logos, and listen to your heart.
As you glide through all the authors, through every lib’ral art.
Hear the mighty rush of the Freshmen, hear the lonesome
Seniors call,
“I’m traveling through the jungle on the Western Canonball.”
Now the Eastern books are dandy, say the folks in Santa Fe,
From the Vedas to Confucius, and Lao-Tse by the way.
But we won’t give up Plotinus, till the darkness round us fall.
No changes can be taken on the Western Canonball. [Chorus]
Here’s to our daddy classics, may their name forever stand,
And always be remembered, and taught throughout the land.
Though their earthly race may falter, in the West’s decline and
fall.
Still we never study history on the Western Canonball. [Chorus]
The Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters
My mind has seen the glory of th’ Idea of the Good,
That it’s not the same as pleasure I have firmly understood.
And I wouldn’t take a tyrant’s power even if I could.
I’m marching from The Cave!
Marching, marching towards the sunlight.
Marching, marching towards the sunlight.
Marching, marching towards the sunlight.
I’m marching from The Cave!
The Fool conceives of God but thinks the faithful are deceived,
BUT a “Greatest Being” whose reality is not believed
Is a being than which something greater still can be conceived,
Which contradicts itself!
Ontological rebuttal.
Ontological rebuttal.
Faithlessness will ever scuttle,
For it contradicts itself!
The State of Nature’s character we know from good report
To be very solitary, nasty, brutish, poor and short.
So let’s give the Sovereign all our rights and every gun and fort.
And then we’ll all survive!
Ratify the Social Contract...
Deterministic limits on my freedom are erased
By the transcendental ideality of time and space.
So my atoms are determined but my will’s a different case.
It’s pure autonomy!
Hail the Transcendental Ego...
They came from old Chicago U. some sixty years ago;
As they rolled into the Program, you could hear the whispers
go:
“There’s Homer, Hobbes and Hegel, there’s Plato and St. Paul,
They came with Scott Buchanan on the Western Canonball.”
[Chorus]
I’ve been through all the steps in my phenomenology.
So it’s Master, Slave or in between it’s all the same to me.
I’m Unhappy and I’m Conscious so I’m absolutely free.
I’m fully synthesized!
I’ve undergone the Dialectic...
{The College -
27
John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
�2,8
{Alumni Voices}
The Secret Life of a Roller Derby Queen
Dressing Up and Acting Out on a Saturday Night
BY Jane McManus (A93)
it was my first night scrim
maging. I was part of a
visiting roller derby team in
an ancient skating rink
called Roller Magic. The
women there had names like
Bleeding Rainbow and Pinky Swears, and I
knew once we got started they were going
to try their hardest to knock me off my
skates and onto the polished wood floor.
And as much as I had butterflies, I
wanted to get at them first.
My 5-year-old daughter was at the snack
bar, playing with some of the other kids
tagging along with moms, and a few
fathers, tattooed or nose-ringed, casually
watched over them.
First two-minute jam, I was a capable
blocker. I can do this, I thought, and I
rammed into Pinky. Once I got comfort
able, one of the veterans threw me the
jammer helmet cover, meaning I was the
only one who could score points for the
team. The whistle blew, and I cut through
the pack of skaters quickly and cleanly,
beating the other woman at the spot.
I skated out fast and glanced at the tables to
see Jean jumping up and down.
“Go, Mommy, go!”
I knew I was going to like roller derby
before I pitched the story to the newspaper
I write for. The Journal News in the New
York City suburbs. I’ve worked as a sports
writer for the last to years, covering most
sports from amateur to professional. Some
I try, some I like better than others. I loved
roller derby from the start: the physicality
of it, the speed and, let’s face it, the
fishnets, I joined the local league. Suburbia
Roller Derby, and adopted a name a sports
writer can live with-Lesley E. Visserate.
I got an e-mail from longtime sports broad
caster Lesley Visser after I told her. Subject
In ordinary life, Jane McManus (A93), on the right in this promotional poster, is a jour
line: “How are we doing?”
nalist AND the mother OF TWO LITTLE GIRLS. On SATURDAY NIGHTS, SHE BECOMES LeSLEY E.
Visserate, roller derby queen.
Some background on me. I am in my,
ahem, 30s and I live in the New York
suburbs. I have two little girls, ages 5 and 3.
Stockings, stripes and Jolly Rogers
But I love derby for the same reasons you
Although I got my first tattoo at age 19, you
colliding in a tangle of wheels and limbs. I
can find features on the sport in any news
wouldn’t know about it unless you work out
like the theater of it, and the fact thatpaper lucky enough to have a hometown
at my gym or know me really, really well. So
before
the crowd and the DJs at a public
league:
it
’
s
sex
and
violence
in
one
sporty
I’m not the usual derby demographic on
bout-it’s just a group of women practicing
package.
the surface.
T
SATURDAY. JUNE 28 - 7pm
{The College-
St. John’s College - Fall 2008 }
�{Alumni Voices}
for months on a dusty sport court at the
police gym in Yonkers, drenched with sweat
hy the end of the night.
For me and for a lot of women who I play
with, roller derhy means getting out of the
nest, out of the life that has been made
comfortable. Out of the world of white
collar workers and academia, out of
affluence and covering other people’s
achievements. For a night, it’s my chance to
be cheered, to dress up and act out.
In the last five years, roller derby has
attracted thousands of women. And, in an
age when the WNBA has to beg for the
insignificant coverage it gets, women in
ponytails and skates get the front page of
the sports section. It reminds me of the
mid-1980s, when a women’s basketball
team had players dress in unitards to titil
late the fans.
I am a basketball player first, even now,
so that double standard irks me. But I don’t
blame derby for being sexy. Wlien she bats
her pretty eyes at me, it’s hard to stay mad.
American audiences still have a hard
time with women and sports. Tennis has
short skirts, so it gets a pass. Softball might
have lesbians, so that’s scary. Volleyball
players are in bikinis, which is awesome.
Just like in life, pretty athletes get the
coverage-why, hello, Danica Patrick! Who
are you wearing?
Given what I do for a living. I’ve given
this some thought. I also noticed that it was
really hard to find a women’s basketball
league nearby. After the passage of Title IX
in 1973 and the millions of women who
started playing sports, I assumed there
would be legions of women playing basket
ball once I got out of St. John’s in 1993.
I’m still waiting.
''Although Igot myfirst
tattoo at age ig, you
wouldn i know about it
unless you work out at
my gym or know me
really, really well So Im
not the usual derby
demographic on the
surface.
‘7 sat on the chicken sandwichfor the go-minute
drive home, shifting uncomfortably in my seat the
whole way I thought about what I was doing—
wedgingfrozen meat under my tailbone—and
whether it was really a sensible decisionfor me to
play a sport like this. ”
And so are a lot of soccer players,
lacrosse players-in fact, most anyone who
played a team sport. Adult women’s leagues
are few and far between in my area just
north of New York City. I did a story on this
a year ago, and I actually sat down and
counted, calling up leagues and recreation
departments and talking to women who
once played a sport in high school.
You want to know why so many women
run? It’s because there aren’t a lot of other
options, and it’s easy to schedule. I’ve
talked to women who hate running, but
hate being inactive just slightly more.
Some of those women come over to the
dark side. Kimberly O’Leary, a woman who
goes by Vixen Von Bruisen on Suburbia,
played seriously in high school. You can see
it from the way she leads practice, very hard
physically, but fun.
As much fun as it is put on a flirty
uniform on the Saturday nights we hold our
bouts at E.J. Murray’s Memorial Rink in
Yonkers, there is a ton of work leading up
to it. We are a young league, just a year old,
and we are still learning. Some of our
players come from other leagues and could
mop up the court with us rookies, but it
really is a cooperative environment where
we try to help each other get better at the
basic skills.
My learning curve is slow. I have a
competitive streak, and I want to be the
best player out there immediately, which I
definitely am not. I throw my elbows, which
is just one of the illegal habits I have. There
have been nights I’ve been so frustrated
with myself that I wanted to quit, and other
nights when I wondered if I was insane.
In early February, I was blocking Jeri
Fling’her (a mother of two and health tech
nician who lives in Connecticut). I was a
little off balance but thought I had her.
I missed her and fell backwards, slamming
my tailbone on the floor. It hurt, but I
told myself to get the $ *#% up and finish
the jam.
{The College -St. John’s
College ■ Fall 2008 }
After practice, I drove to a gas station in
a crappy part of town and asked, through
the bulletproof glass, for a frozen sandwich.
The guy tried to sell me a refrigerated Hot
Pocket but I said, “No, it has to be solid
ice.” Just then my teammate Black Star
Heroine pulled up in a station wagon to ask
if I was OK-a woman in a sketchy neighbor
hood wearing fishnets-and I paid for a
chicken sandwich.
I told her what happened and that I was
in a lot of pain.
“Oh, that happened to me, too,” Black
Star said. “It’s probably going to wake you
up for the next few nights.”
I sat on the chicken sandwich for the 30minute drive home, shifting uncomfortably
in my seat the whole way. I thought about
what I was doing-wedging frozen meat
under my tailbone-and whether it was
really a sensible decision for me to play a
sport like this.
I did wake up in pain. I popped Advils. I
couldn’t drive my stick shift for weeks. It is
a solid six months later, and my tailbone
still aches. You know it’s the one bone they
can’t do anything for when it breaks?
Still, I was back at practice the next
week.
Call it my midlife crisis. I’m staving off
the creep of mediocrity. I had my lame old
tattoo redone in brilliant colors and
invested in fishnets of every variety. My
body has emerged from the years of preg
nancy and nursing, wonderful in their own
way, but over.
I have abs again.
This might not last forever. I’m covering
the New York Jets for the first time this
season, and I’m aware that I could get an
injury tomorrow that causes my little hobby
to intrude on my real life. But I will savor
my tenure as a roller girl while I can.
�30
{Bibliofile}
Ee, tutor Ben Kraus had a trunk fuU of
Marvel comics. I was always moving
between the trunk of comic books and the
great books.”
Sharp Teeth
Toby Barlow (SF88)
HarperCollins, aoo8
A lover’s revenge takes on satisfying and
creepy possibilities in Toby Barlow’s darkly
humorous thriller, Sharp Teeth. Early in the
story, set in the sprawl! ng neighborhoods of
Los Angeles, a certain “She” muses about a
failed romance with yet another lover. “She”
finds comfort on the shoulder of Lark, a
successful attorney, werewolf pack leader,
and long-time friend. As they have a latenight chat Lark promises her something that
will change her “completely...with it comes
a certain power.” Instead of offering another
glass of wine. Lark slices open his forearm
and invites her to mingle her blood with his.
By morning “She” wakes up as “her own
brand of beast,” a werewolf in Lark’s pack.
Sharp Teeth is a romantic thriller that
threads multiple plot lines teeming with
rival gangs of lycanthropes, high-stakes card
games, dog traffickers and catchers, and
organized crime in the seething underbelly
of Los Angeles. In blank verse that jumps
like rap music, Barlow dances between
human consciousness and the musings of
lycanthropes. With almost scientific
authority Barlow sifts through the centuries,
describing how small packs survived, biding
their time, roaming the wilderness and
surviving by killing “men that no one would
miss.” Rest assured, Barlow chants, despite
technology and surveillance, “the blood
sugar fever still survives.” Barlow dispels the
myths about how humans transform into
lycanthropes: “It’s not the full moon. That’s
as ancient and ignorant as any myth. The
blood just quickens with a thought... So that
one can self-ignite...becoming something
rather more canine.”
Unlike popular science fiction stories in
which aliens inhabit human bodies (revealed
when one is face-to-face with their green
reptilian eyes) there are no clues-only
surprises-as to who is and isn’t a werewolf
in Sharp Teeth. “Even the werewolves do not
recognize another werewolf,” says Barlow.
Yet what makes the novel so gripping is not
so much the strangeness of the mysterious
crossover into a fycanthrope that characters
like Lark deftly navigate. Rather it is the
human struggles-the beast that resides
within each of us-the desires, rages, loves,
competitions, that makes the book a
page turner.
“A classic werewolf fears the transforma
tion and the deeds he might do as a beast.
—Patricia Dempsey
Racing Odysseus:
A College President
Freshman Again
Becomes a
Roger H. Martin
University of California Press, 2008
deeds he will not remember; but my were
wolves, like humans, are wholly conscious,”
says Barlow. They remember their blood
thirsty deeds, and like us, they have long
ings, regrets, dreams, and heartbreaks.
Sharp’s Teeth is populated with hip char
acters such as a persistent LAPD detective, a
blonde surfer-chick (who is also a werewolf),
a Hispanic meth manufacturer, and Cutter
and Blue, bridge tournament finalists who
just happen to be werewolves in Lark’s pack.
These lycanthropes are clever. So is Mr.
Venable, a mysterious sage that Barlow says
“pays homage to an old tutor at St. John’s,
Bruce Venable. He was a man out of time,
a dichotomy, and a tremendous amount of
fun. Like my tutor, Mr. Venable in the book
embraces fife in all its highs and lows.”
Barlow, an executive creative director at
an advertising agency in Detroit, didn’t plan
on writing a book. But
several years ago when
he was living in a
Chicago hotel room, an
article on a dogcatcher
caught his eye. “I
needed something to
pass the time and at a
certain point the char
acters came alive.”
Barlow did intend for
Sharp Teeth to be visu
ally rich, just like the
comic books he discov
ered at St. John’s.
“When I got to Santa
{The Colleges?.
John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
When he was 61 years old, and then still
the president of Randolph-Macon College,
Roger Martin decided to become a
freshman again-at St. John’s College.
Having survived melanoma against
tremendous odds, Martin was looking to
find new perspective and new challenges
when he joined the freshman class in the
fall of 2004. He sat in on freshman
seminar, became a member of the crew
team, and even attended waltz parties in
the Great Hall.
In this honest and deeply personal
memoir, he chronicles his journey from a
life in which he was an over-controlling,
efficient time manager to a life in which he
became a student immersed in the liberal
arts. At St. John’s, Martin writes, he redis
covered the art of questioning, conversa
tion, and contemplation. He shares his
great admiration for St. John’s students
and tutors, and has special words of praise
for Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A78),
whom Martin got to know well as the harddriving coach of the St. John’s crew team.
Toward the end of his stay at St. John’s,
Martin wrote: “I have arrived at seminar
15 minutes early...I am finally enjoying
myself. I’m enjoying being a member of the
crew. I’m enjoying reading the Great
Books. I’m enjoying hanging
out in the Coffee Shop and
meeting students. I’ve attained
nirvana.”
Gumbo Tales: Finding
My Place at the
New Orleans Table
Sara Roahen (SF94)
W.W. Norton, 2008
There are as many gumbos in
Louisiana as there are accents
writes Sara Roahen in her book.
Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place
�{Bibliofile}
at the New Orleans Table. But in New
Orleans her favorite gumbo is “as thick as
a cypress swamp in flavor.” In post-Katrina
New Orleans, Roahen finds another reason
to savor gumbo-as a symbol for the city’s
resilience.
Roahen lived in the Crescent City for
several years, while her husband attended
medical school. In August 2005, Hurri
cane Katrina disrupted their lives and
forced a move to Philadelphia, but Roahen
frequently returned to New Orleans to
taste gumbo and other favorites.
The result is not a compendium of
recipes, but essays about food and place.
She cobbles together aromas and flavors,
conversations with patrons at local
eateries, oral histories, and food history in
this personal celebration of the city’s
culture. Roahan explores the wonders of
familiar dishes such as po boys, red beans
and rice, crayfish bisque, coffee and
chicory, beignets-“naked or sugared”-as
well as dishes introduced by the city’s
varied cultures, including Vietnamese pho
and Sicilian braciolone.
Roahen and her husband, Mathieu
DeSchutter (SF94) are now back in
New Orleans.
Violent Video Game Effects on
Children and Adolescents:
Theory, Research and Public
Policy___________________________
Craig Anderson, Douglas Gentile (A86),
Katherine Buckley
Oxford University Press, aoo8
Do violent video games contribute to aggres
sive and violent behavior? Douglas Gentile
(A86) has coauthored an insightful explo
ration of this question that incorporates
both scientific research and pubhc policy in
an exploration of a possible link between
violent video games and aggression.
Gentile is a developmental psychologist,
assistant professor of psychology at Iowa
State University and director for the National
Institute on Media and the Family. Violent
Video Game Effects presents the results of
three studies that use various measures of
aggression and research on elementary, high
school, and college-age students. The
authors note that critics confuse the scien
tific question (Are there harmful effects?)
with the legal question related to First
Amendment rights. In the meantime, as the
debate rages on, the book offers tips for
choosing video games and a wealth of
What the Tutors Are Reading
Frank Pagano, Santa Fe: “I am revisiting
Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. The novel
is not about the (late) ‘60s generation so
much as what they reacted against: the
perfect American, Roth’s Seymour Levov,
the Swede. Roth brings to life the all-Amer
ican boy, and shows why the baby boomers
chose to make him the enemy.”
David Levine (class of vjhy), Santa Fe: “I’m
just finishing Henry James’ The Princess
Casamassima, which is the first James
novel I’ve read. Published in 1886, it’s
about the fate of culture amidst the rise of
popular democratic movements.”
David Carl, Santa Fe: “Steven Pressfield’s
The Virtue of Warts a work of historical
adventure fiction based on the fife of
Alexander the Great, which gives a very
engaging fictionalized vision of the fife of
the great Macedonian general. Pressfield is
perhaps most famous for his novel Gates of
Fire, a fictional account of the Battle of
Thermopylae (before the comic book and
movie goo brought it to pop culture atten
tion). Pressfield’s portrayal of Alexander is
an inspiring vision of conflicted leadership,
perhaps even of the tension between
philosophy and politics.”
Nick Maistrellis, Annapolis: “I’m on
sabbatical leave so I have much more time
to read. I have read a novel named/ZZZ, by
Phillip Larkin who is a well-known English
poet. The novel is about a lower middle
class scholarship student at Oxford in 1940
and his attempts to fit into an upper-class
world. The novel is beautifully written and
quite moving. I’m also reading Out ofthe
Labyrinth, by Robert and Ellen Kaplan. It
{The College-
St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 }
31
resources on how to be an involved
consumer and citizen. Says Gentile, “The
media are far more powerful than we want to
admit, but we are far from powerless to
control the effects.”
The Theater of Insects___________
Jo Whaley, contributions by Linda Weiner
Chronicle Books, 2008
Santa Fe tutor Linda Weiner wrote the
primary essay for The Theater ofInsects, a
new book by Jo Whaley. Weiner’s identifi
cation of the insects accompanies Whaley’s
dazzling, theatrically-staged photographs
of butterflies, beetles, dragonflies and
other colorful bugs. The collaboration
resulted in a work that echoes the style of
natural history dioramas, and-thro ugh
Wiener’s contribution-offers a thoughtful
reflection on the intersection of art and
science. The Theater ofInsects, titled after
a 1658 work of the same name, is published
to coincide with a series of exhibitions
across the country, including the Photo
Eye Gallery (Santa Fe, N.M.), the National
Academies Keck Center Gallery and
National Academy of Sciences (both in
Washington, D.C.).-^
is the best book on teaching and learning
mathematics I have seen.”
SamKutler, class ofig54, Annapolis: '''The
Warriors, by J. Glenn Gray. He describes
many of the horrors of war and reflects on
them. My father was in the first World War,
and my childhood is steeped in memories
of the second World War. The day he
received his doctorate in philosophy. Gray
received a letter from President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt which began ‘Greet
ings.’ He found that all the philosophy he
had been studying no longer meant
anything to him because the war became
his whole world.”
Pamela Kraus, Annapolis: "Posthumous
Keats by Stanley Plumly. I have a long
standing interest in Keats, so I read a lot of
things by and about him. Plumly, who is a
poet and occasional essayist, has written a
reflective account of Keats as living on
through his fife, poems, and reputation. It’s
a lovely book.” dlk
�32
{Alumni Profile}
Seattle’s Philosopher Cop
Clark Kimerer (SC78)
BY Patricia Dempsey
the distant horizon but completely
here have been
misses the immediate threat.”
moments in his 25When making split-second
year career when
decisions, Kimerer can’t afford to
Seattle’s Deputy Chief
be contemplative. “It’s a time to
of Police Clark
stand watch. If you think too much,
Kimerer (SF78) has
you won’t survive.”
questioned his line of work. In
Kimerer honed his ability to
aoo6 when a Seattle gunman shot
make split-second decisions
several young adults at a rave dance
during stints as a patrol officer,
after-party and then pulled the
SWAT Team training officer, chief
trigger on himself, Kimerer and his
hostage negotiator, captain
boss. Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske,
charged with vice and narcotics,
were called to the scene. Kimerer
and today as head of emergency
had to share the grim news with the
preparedness for the city of
victim’s families, brief the media,
Seattle. After he joined the force as
and console the teenagers who were
a patrol officer 25 years ago, his
grieving for their friends. “It was
survival depended on being
one scene of human despair after
constantly alert and mindful
another over a six-hour period,”
because “the situation could
says Kimerer. “When it came time
degenerate instantly.” Kimerer
to walk through the scene, I turned
excelled at making critical deci
to Gil and said, ‘I’m not sure if I
sions under pressure and in 1985
want to walk through another
became a SWAT Training Officer
slaughter. I see my own kids every
and Team Member, handling lifetime I do.’”
and-death situations every day. He
“You have to do it,” Kerb kowske
trained “the guys [who] crash
told his deputy chief. “One, you
through the front doors, the
have in your life been devoted to
deadly force cadre [whose] goal
understanding this. Everything you
always is to save lives. I had to
have read and thought about the
create a curriculum dealing with
human endeavor to find out what is
these issues as well as post-trau
good in the world, you have devoted
matic stress syndrome. We were
yourself to. Two, you have to do it to
often faced with making a good
show the world that you care. And
choice among many bad options.”
three, you have to do it to show
Kimerer’s education at St. John’s
yourself that you care.”
“is a real conversation starter when
As Kimerer walked through the
In his 25-YEAR CAREER, Clark Kimerer (SF78) rose from
sitting in a roomful of pohce
grisly scene, trying to make sense
PATROL officer TO SECOND-IN-COMMAND OF ONE OF THE NATION’S
LARGEST POLICE FORCES. He’S GAINED A NATIONAL REPUTATION
chiefs.” He is a gifted leader who
of what his eyes were taking in, he
FOR HIS EXPERTISE IN EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND HOMELAND
studied at the FBI, Northwestern
thought of readings from Plato,
SECURITY.
University, and the Program on
Montaigne, Homer, and Hegel.
Negotiation at Harvard Law
“Snippets went sweeping through
School. He is a philosopher cop
my mind: What is good? How can
who reads voraciously and is as
you find sense in this kind of
Yet Kimerer is quick to note that deep
compassionate as he is rational about his
slaughter? How do you make peace with
reflection does not always have a place in
fellow human beings. Kimerer volunteers to
what is bad? If you don’t make peace, the
the line of duty. “Where do the readings not
help disabled adults, particularly the home
alternative is despair. Kierkegaard was
belong? They do not belong when there is a
particularly poetic in how he explored this.”
danger in thinking too much. In Moby-Dick, less, and embraces Oscar Romero’s libera
tion theology, which maintains that values
Each day Kimerer asks himself, “How do
Melville describes how the last person you
and ethics should be part of public policy.
these great works have a place in my small
want in the crow’s nest is someone ‘given to
Kimerer never loses sight of the irony that
life as a police officer? To make sense of the
unseasonable meditation’ up there with a
he has “one of the most unusual job
good is one way of dealing with the bad.”
copy of the Phaedo, because he’s looking at
T
{The College. 5t. John’s
College • Fall aooS }
�{Alumni Profile}
descriptions in civilization” and as deputy
chief, he uses “coercive force to keep law
and order.” As second in command of the
igth-largest municipal police department,
with a $aa6 million dollar annual budget
and 1,870 employees, he also investigates
cases, prevents human misery, and
“protects every citizen, day in, day out.”
Ultimately Kimerer is a public servant,
“bound by duty and responsibility, rather
than authority and prerogatives.”
Kimerer also oversees emergency
preparedness and homeland security for the
city of Seattle. Most city police departments
do not oversee large-scale emergency and
disaster response; however Seattle is a port
city and headquarters of the Microsoft
Corporation, a symbolic target for terrorist
threats. Seattle is also vulnerable to natural
disasters such as windstorms, landslides,
and earthquakes. In 2001 the Nisqually
Earthquake (magnitude 6.8) under the
Puget Sound caused over $200 million in
damage, and in 1999 the city’s New Year
celebration was cancelled when a man was
caught smuggling bomb-making materials
into the U.S. at Port Angeles, with plans to
stay in a hotel near the city’s famed Space
Needle. To keep abreast of emergency
response and terrorist-prevention methods,
Kimerer travels globally to meet with his
counterparts in various governments and
also advises the Major Cities Chiefs, an
organization for the chiefs of the nation’s 56
largest police and sheriff departments, on
such strategies. “Here in Seattle we have a
leading edge with data and communications
systems that are interdependent. All these
things help us to manage disaster.”
Just five years into his career, Kimerer
faced disasters of a different kind. He was
tapped from SWAT Team training to
become Chief Hostage Negotiator (a posi
tion he held from 1985 to 1992). In the midst
of a tense situation, Kimerer learned to
calmly persuade another human being by
hstening and asking questions. “It’s a real
devotion to understanding through
listening,” he explains. “Basicallyyou’re
trying to get a desperate person, someone
who’s taken over a hostage, on a wavelength
where you can reason with him or her.”
Kimerer has seen 300 to 400 such
scenarios in the past 25 years. “There are so
many causes-behavioral disorders, chem
ical disorders-but the one thing each
hostage taker has in common is singlemindedness, an inabihty to look beyond a
self-formulated view of a course of action to
be taken.” As a crisis negotiator, Kimerer
built a rapport. “I had to convey a profound
level of attention to the person. I had to try
to let the subject construct a larger
universe, one that had options and other
choices than suicide or murder.”
Just as the horrific shooting scene from
the rave after-party lingers in Kimerer’s
mind, so too does one hostage episode in
which a suicidal-homicidal man, obsessed
with his caregiver, barricaded himself and
the woman in a clinic. “In this incident,
you’re looking at a lot of things. Sometimes
that person wants to do what’s called
‘suicide by cop.’ He wants the cops to
kill him in front of someone that he’s
angry with; he wants to act out in a
murder/suicide in front of those who have
wronged him,” says Kimerer. “I’ve seen
hundreds of those cases.”
''How do these great
works have aplace in
my small l^e as apolice
officer? To make sense of
the good is one way of
dealing with the bad.
Clark Kimerer (SF78)
In this case, Kimerer took it step-by-step.
“The first thing I had to decide was who not
to involve, such as the ex-spouses and
psychiatrists. A lot of hostage takers have
issues with authority and even clergymen
can create problems. There are a lot of
sensitive spots and each situation is
different. The second thing I did was try to
draw the hostage taker out to assess his
personality by constantly asking question
after question: ‘Why would you want to put
her at risk?’ ‘Let’s not do anything until we
can keep exploring this. Let’s keep talking.’
‘Where’s the weapon?’ I get him to put the
weapon down, if possible. It’s a dialectical
exercise. It’s Socratic. We know what we
want the answer to be. It’s not an openended, unconditional exploration. But you
only see hostage takers change when
they learn for themselves and discover for
themselves.”
{The College -John’s
College ■ Fall 2008 }
33
Finally there was a breakthrough. Says
Kimerer, “The subject admitted that the
woman was I ike his mother and he was
abused as a kid. Here was a chance to make
contrasts, to point out that the woman he
was keeping as hostage and planning to
murder was not his mother. I could progress
the dialectic along, tell him, ‘This is not
your mother. Let’s talk about the differ
ences and start creating some separation
and some options.’”
Kimerer’s ability to walk such delicate
situations with skill and patience makes him
a natural for law enforcement. Yet even
though he grew up in a police family,
Kimerer had no intention of joining the
force. “My stepfather and my mother were
both assistant police chiefs. My mother was
the highest-ranking policewoman [in the
country]. When she retired, she became a
U.S. Marshall. My great uncle was a fire
chief, my brother was chief of police, so the
whole family was involved in the police
force. I grew up socializing with the chiefs,
so I was never intimidated by them or the
paramilitary culture.”
After he graduated from St. John’s,
Kimerer worked as assistant director of
admissions in Santa Fe and studied at the
Graduate Institute while his (now) wife Julie
Berg (SF79) finished as an undergraduate.
Today they live in Seattle and are raising
three teenage sons. When they first moved
to the city in 1979, Kimerer worked in a
small business for several years, but he
wasn’t fulfilled. As a Big Brother volunteer,
he got involved in a case where he worked
closely with police detectives who were on
the trail of a child molester. The criminal
was sent to prison for several years, and
Kimerer gained appreciation for the detec
tives’ dedication. “I discovered that I was
really excited about justice, even if it’s not
perfect justice,” he says.
From his 8th-floor office with views of the
Puget Sound, Kimerer recollects the
dangerous days of his career; “I lookback
on my life, my St. John’s education, the cop
who spent four years looking at great books
and argues vehemently for the rights of the
downtrodden. Is this unusual? I don’t know,
but this is where my life has gone.”
Today Kimerer is more likely to be
dashing to a meeting than to a crime scene.
“When I’m called out, that’s when it’s
really bad, like the mass killing at the rave
after-party. Otherwise, the biggest threat I
might encounter these days,” he says, “is a
paper cut.
�{Alumni Notes}
34
1935
Richard S. Woodman writes
that he is still enjoying life and
the practice of law in lovely
upstate New York.
1937
Jack Owens sent a poem to
The College:
Let the music and adventures
play on
Until we must give up the gift of
life
Then comes a place of mercy to
give us relief and liberation
from
The tangled web we have woven
in our busy life in wonderland
Full of good works, and vanities,
plus all the ills and pains
We leave all of these our history.
Our love will live forever
So sail away to this new place of
supreme rest and peace
Now when friends and family,
smell a new blown flower.
Or hear a joyful tune, or see a
graceful wild bird-they will
think of you
1943
“Peg and I have been married for
65 years,” writes BURTON
Armstrong. “And it all started
at St. John’s.”
1953
“In a spirit of reason and good
will,” Jennie Alexander has
put away her former name, John
D. Alexander, Jr., and gender.
She continues to perform with
the Baltimore Jazz Trio. Indeed
the trio once again performed at
McDowell Hall during
Homecoming. Alexander also
continues her study of American
vernacular post-and-rung chair
making and 17th century joinery.
She has recently co-authored an
article on chair making to be
published in American Furniture
2009.
1954
Bernard Jacoh completed
29 years as a law teacher at
Hofstra University Law School
and was granted emeritus status
as of the 2008-09 academic year.
1962
My profile in View, the journal of
the Library of American
Landscape History, describes me
as a “preservation hero” because
of my efforts at Hampton in
Maryland; Stan Hywet Hall and
Gardens in Akron, Ohio; and
Ford House in Grosse Point
Shores, Mich. I retired June 30,
2007,” writes JOHN FrankLIN
Miller.
Steve Almy writes: “My wife
and I are happily retired in
California, on the western slope
of the Sierras, a really beautiful
spot. I am the president of our
local chapter of the National
Active/Retired Federal
Employees Association,
Hangtown Chapter 1503, in
Placerville, Calif. Our goal is to
protect the earned benefits of
retirees from the federal
government. Congress has tried
to cut our pensions but we have
(so far) successfully resisted. We
were visited recently by another
class member, George Jones,
and his beautiful wife. I wonder
how many classmates realize we
have a genuine war hero among
us. I spend my time Ashing,
reading and gardening, very
relaxing after a lifetime spying
against our country’s enemies.
My wife is the world’s greatest
cook of food from the Middle
East and Southeast Asia, where
we lived for so many years, so I
am constantly fighting the battle
of the bulge. I’d like to hear from
anyone in our class, particularly
if you’re going to be in the area
and can drop by, Yia sasC
Cecil Wade reports that his
daughter Cynthia won the Oscar
for Short Documentary at this
year’s Academy Awards
ceremonies.
1966
Barbara Hockman just retired
1964
i960
teaching English in China.
“My kids are a lot more daring
than I am! ” she writes.
Arlene Andrew is still working
full time as a senior planner for
the city of La Verne, 3.3 miles
from her home in Claremont,
Calif. She has no immediate
plans to retire. Her daughter,
Abby Banks, has had a book
published: Punk House, a photo
documentation of the homes of
groups of “punk” young people
she visited as she traveled across
America. Her son. Josh, is
after 30 “delightful and intense
years” teaching English as a
Second Language at the City
College of San Francisco: “I
taught all levels and types of ESL
from vocational and crosscultural studies to many years of
advanced academic classes. I was
helped in my work by my St.
John’s foundation followed by
five years abroad, teaching in
Japan, and traveling overland
around the world. Now I’ll have
time to paint and focus on my
Tibetan Buddhist studies and
practice (ongoing for more than
Decorating Idea
Leo Pickens (A78) wants to give alumni the first shot at a
bargain: two classic wooden AyLING sweep oars, made in 1971, WITH
THE DISTINCTIVE St. JoHn’s ORANGE-AND-BLACK DESIGN ON THE BLADE.
They’re 12' long, ideal for either dedicated rowers or those
WITH AVERY BIG HOUSE TO DECORATE. PiCKENS IS ASKING $250 OR BEST
OFFER, AND SAYS ALL PROCEEDS GO BACK TO SUPPORT THE ROWING
PROGRAM. Call 410-268-2558 or e-mail leo.pickens@sjca.edu.
(The College -Sr. John’s College . Fall zoo8 }
�{AlumniNotes}
25 years), simplicity dictated by a
teacher’s pension. Feel free to
send me an e-mail.”
1967
Division of Pediatric
Pulmonology at Childrens
Hospital Los Angeles. He is
married to Susan Keens, PhD, a
clinical psychologist. Daughter
Jenny is a fifth-grade teacher, and
will be married this summer. Son
Peter is a computer programmer.
Ezra Harris (A) and
Eve Cohen Olman (A6g)
got married about three years
ago at the Keren Or center for
special education in Jerusalem.
“It was a gas. We have recently
been blessed with the birth of
our fourth grandchild. Praise
the Lord!”
1968
More retirement news, from
M. Joy Avery (SF): “After
completing three careers, I
finally retire at 62 years: 5 years
as a technical writer, 26 years as
an interpreter to the deaf,
10 years as an occupational
,
therapy assistant.”
Tom Keens (SF) is the chair of
the Pediatric Pulmonology
Sub-board of the American Board
of Pediatrics: “This is a seven
member board who writes the
board examination for pediatric
pulmonology, which aU
physicians wishing to be certified
in this subspecialty must take and
pass. Members serve a seven-year
term. In my last two-years, I was
elected chair of the subboard. I
was initially reluctant to agree to
serve, but I realized that this
group has important obligations
not only to write the board
examinations, but also to
determine the knowledge area
which defines pediatric
pulmonology as a subspecialty. It
has been a very interesting seven
years.” Tom is also a Professor of
Pediatrics, Physiology and
Biophysics at the Keck School of
Medicine of the University of
Southern California, and he
holds a faculty position in the
1969
Joseph P. Baratta (A) writes:
“My big book. The Politics of
World Federation (2004),
continues to make slow, scholarly
progress. It has been reviewed
eight times. It has been cited in
the first note of Paul Kennedy’s
The Parliament ofMan. It is also
cited in a note in Joshua
Goldstein’s International
Relations and in a Wikipedia
article on “world government.”
My website on the book contains
the introduction and pictures of
me, worn out with labors to
realize the dream of world peace
and justice: http://web.mac.com
/Josephs aratta. ”
L. Luis Lopez (SFGI) has
published three books of poetry.
Musings ofa Barrio Sack Boy, A
Painting ofSand, and Each
Month I Sing (October 2008). He
teaches Latin, Ancient Greek,
Greek and Roman Literature, and
Mythology at Mesa State College
in Grand Junction, Colo. His
daughter, Reina Lopez, is
preparing to enter the Graduate
Institute in Santa Fe in January.
“To all who wished me well,”
writes BARBARA MORDES BOSS
(A), “it has been six years since I
was hit by a truck and I am finally
feeling good. The hardest part of
healing was going to the doctors.
Most doctors merely prescribed
drugs, and then more drugs. Two
months ago, a new doctor.
Dr. Brilliant and Beautiful, ran
her fingers over my body, from
my ears to my wrists, and then
from the back of my head to my
{The College. 5f.
35
Dancing All Night
DELL Kesselman (SFGI76) has been working in Phoenix
for four-and-a-half years as a psychotherapist at a
nonprofit agency, “using my liberal education daily. In
March, my only child became a Jewish wife, and I danced
and smiled all night. Living with my two cats, I continue
to sing and purr with abandon, laughing more as I near
60 than ever before.”
I
wrist. She then forcefully
declared that I must decaffeinate
and she immediately ordered an
echocardiogram. I stopped all
drugs as so ordered and after one
week, felt better than normal.
Still do. Last week I went to the
heart ultrasound doctor. I was not
able to see the screen as he
probed and muttered, but what I
heard was rather creepy; retarded
valves not quite clapping,
coughing and wheezing, as they
applauded the heart. (The doctor
had muttered ‘What a beautiful
heart!’ upon finding a good
viewing spot. At 60, any
compliment to a body part is nice
to hear.) Through the splashing
and whistling he made comment
on my ‘heart murmur’ describing
my weak mitral valve. If any
friends have advice please pass it
on. Truth, Beauty, and the Good
have not languished in my heart
but is there not an aspect of each,
particular for the aged? Any
thoughts, let me know. I do not
dream of my Rock ’n Roll time;
not Dylan, The Stones, The
Doors, Jimi, nor even Hiatt...
every night I dream of
St. John’s!”
“Retired, built a new house
(Curmudgeon Castle West), got a
new dog (Simon) and kept the
important stuff: wife (Sarah),
health (like bull) and business
(for the dogs),” writes JAMES
Scanlon (SF). The view to
Monte Sol is a bit dim; it seems to
be just over the curvature of the
earth from here (about 4000
miles). Reflection on the
St. John’s experience progresses
from pricey at the time to
priceless over time.”
1971
George Elias (A) writes: “After
more than 20 years seUing
businesses, I have embarked on a
new career as a financial advisor
with Morgan Stanley. I am part of
a new program that began late
last year in New York and is now
piloting in San Francisco. My job
is to help people preserve and
grow their financial assets- so
that they can enjoy a long,
comfortable retirement. A
curious fact: two members of my
office are longtime clients and
admirers of Dan Sullivan (A71),
President/Owner of the Strategic
Coach. Go Dan!”
Susan Volkmar (SF) moved
from Raleigh, N.C., to the Boston
area. She continues to be active
with the National Association of
Science Writers and the New
England Science Writers.
1972
Melissa Kaplan Drolet (SF)
was happy and proud to attend
the graduation of her daughter,
Megan Josephine Drolet
(SF08) in May: “Also in
attendance were my sister,
Sharon Kaplan Wallis (Class
of 1964) with her husband
Leonard Weeks and my brother,
cont. onpages'^
John’s College . Fall ^008 }
�36
{AlumniProfile}
The View from the Bench
Jean FitzSimon (A^g)
BY Rosemary Harty
he Philadelphia couple was
drowning in deht. They hoth
held low-wage jobs: she as a
waitress, and he as a retail
clerk. A compulsive gambler,
the man hid $120,000 in
credit card bills from his wife. When he
finally hit the jackpot, he spent some of the
money and gave her the rest to pay off their
mortgage. But other creditors were
waiting, and that’s what brought the man
before Judge Jean K. FitzSimon (A73) in
the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania last year.
In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, a debtor can
seek a discharge of certain debts,
preventing creditors from taking further
legal action to collect. It’s unusual for
FitzSimon to deny a discharge, but in this
case she ruled that the man intended to
“hinder, delay, and defraud” his unsecured
creditors. “This is not the action of an
Presiding over the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Judge
‘honest but unfortunate debtor’ seeking a
Jean FitzSimon (A73) seeks the gray areas in the cases that come before her.
fresh start,” she wrote in her ruling.
Reflecting on the case later, FitzSimon
said it was a difficult one for her. “It’s not
ever forced to use a credit card, but teaser
She later moved to Chicago, where she was
my fault that this man gambled. But you
interest
rates, credit checks, confusing
appointed Acting U.S. Trustee for the
have this poor woman and her two children
language, and other marketing devices are
Northern District of Illinois, gaining
who will effectively be out on the street
at best ethically questionable, FitzSimon
expertise in bankruptcy law.
unless they can refinance their home,” she
says. And no one in Washington paid atten
After IO years with the government, she
says. “It was very clear that these were
tion
when
the
economy
was
booming.
needed
a new challenge and launched a
poor people who were in a bad situation,
FitzSimon speaks from personal experi
private practice in Phoenix, working on
but the code was clear. The only thing
ence. Right out of law school (the Univer
behalf of debtors. Apart from the long
that’s harder in what I do is when someone
sity of Notre Dame), she acquired two
hours, she enjoyed working on her own.
actually has to lose their house.”
credit
cards,
each
with
an
$1,800
limit.
She
But a headhunter led her to a job as in
At a time when many Americans are
used them to equip her first apartment,
house counsel for Sears, which was dealing
struggling financially, FitzSimon sees the
buy work clothes, and acquire the neces
with legal troubles stemming from its debt
human costs of ready credit. In the case of
sary elements for “building a life” as a staff collection practices. In less than two years,
the lottery winner, she wonders: how did a
attorney with the Department of Justice.
she became the company’s chief compli
man earning $19,000 a year acquire 9
Concerned about mounting debt on top of
ance officer and vice president. Her skill in
credit cards and a $200,000 line of credit?
school loans, she kept her spending down.
digging Sears out of legal quagmires led
“There are people out there digging
“I was smart enough to know I had to pay
her to Whitehall Jewelers, which was strug
themselves into a hole who are not plan
more than just the minimum, but it still
gling with financial difficulties and fending
ning to pay off their debt,” FitzSimon
took me three full years to pay those cards
off a proxy fight. As part of a small execu
acknowledges. “But there are also people
back down to zero,” she recalls. She has
tive team, she sometimes put in 100 hours
who lost their jobs, or they have illnesses
never carried a balance since.
in a workweek, but she enjoyed great
and medical bills they can’t pay. So they
FitzSimon was attracted to the law for the discounts on jewelry.
put it on the credit card this month,
same reason she was drawn to St. John’s:
Climbing the corporate ladder and
thinking that maybe next month they can
the freedom to pursue a wide range of inter keeping abreast of developments in the law
get a second job, that somehow they can
ests. She began her legal career at the
left little time for a social life. But
catch up. But they never do.”
Justice Department, where she started out
FitzSimon’s life changed when she made
There’s plenty of fault to spread around
in the Office of Information and Privacy.
time for a summer alumni program in
for the credit crisis, she adds. No one is
T
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{Alumni Notes}
Bart Kaplan (Class of 1965),
with his wife, Betty Kaplan.
Greatly missed at the graduation
was Megan’s father, Raymond
Drolet (SF69), who passed
away September 27, 2007.”
Geraldine Kline (SFGI) is
returning to Cochabamba,
Bolivia, this September, for the
20th anniversary of INFANTE,
an organization she founded in
1988. INFANTE has as its mission
the protection and education of
women. Among other activities,
the organization began and
fosters transitional homes for
abandoned babies and national
adoptions for Bolivian families.
1973
Mary L. Batteen (A) has been
chair of the Oceanography
Department at the Naval
’
Postgraduate School for seven
37
Deep in the Mountains
ews from Susan Read (SFGI85): “My son,
Harry, is now 13 and able to do some of the
repairs around our old Victorian house-1837,
colorful history. I still teach English at Wooster
School, but I also now do the yearbook, which
provides a kind of tedious creativity. I built an
Adirondack lean-to last week, deep in the mountains with
15 friends. All is well.” -*■
years: “I am a professor of
oceanography and am about to
write a book on ocean dynamics
that I hope will inspire a new
generation to study climate
change.” In August, Batteen gave
a seminar at the Ocean and
Climate Sustainability
Conference on “Science and the
Public” and on reaching an
understanding on global climate
change. “I hope to visit the
original St. John’s College, our
college while in Oxford! ”
Jan Lisa Huttner (A) writes:
“Approximately five years ago, I
created a movement that is now
known as WITASWAN (wit-uhswan = Women in the Audience
Supporting Women Artists Now).
After three increasingly
successful annual programs in
Chicago, WITASWAN
transformed this year into
International SWAN Day when
the Fund for Women Artists
joined the cause. Over 160
groups in ii countries on 4
continents celebrated the first
International SWAN Day on
March 29, 2008, and we have just
received a $25,000 grant from
the National Endowment for the
Arts to spread the word about the
next International SWAN Day on
March 28, 2009. (International
SWAN Day will always be on the
last Saturday of every March as
the wrap-up event of Women’s
History Month.) For more info,
see my blog
www.TheHotPinkPen.com
and/or www.SwanDay.org.”
1974
News from MARTHA (Mackey)
Pendleton and Randal O.
Pendleton (both SF): Randy has
retired and the Pendletons
expected to start renovating their
home this year. Son WALKER
(A99) is married to Rachel
Vedaa (SF99). The Pendletons’
cont. on page gg
Santa Fe in 1986, where she was intro
duced to therapist Lee Fischler (SF68).
They married in 1987.
Philadelphia is Fischler’s hometown,
and his love for the city is one of the
reasons FitzSimon put her name in the hat
when the bankruptcy court vacancy came
up. As a merit appointment, not a political
one, the post was within her reach, but she
was still surprised to be offered the job.
“Did you mean to call Jean FitzSimon?”
she asked the Circuit Court judge who
called her with the news. With the court
room filled with friends and family, she
was sworn in on Aug. 16, 2006. She and
Fischler found a place close to the
Philadelphia Art Museum, and she settled
into her chambers in the city’s massive
Robert C. Nix United States Courthouse.
A year later, FitzSimon is still pinching
herself. “In spite of the long hours, I have
enjoyed all my jobs,” says FitzSimon.
“But never in my life have I been as
satisfied as this.”
To an outsider, it may seem that her
court is where the American dream comes
to die. But FitzSimon tries to make the
system work for everyone. Few individuals
get the opportunity to interact with the
legislative or executive branches of Amer
ican government; FitzSimon wants citizens
to see the judiciary at its best. “I have the
opportunity to give people a magnificent
experience of the court system,” she
explains. “They may not agree with what I
do, but they feel that they are heard and
that I mean to be fair. If you’re ever going
to have the sense that government can be
trusted, it’s going to be with the judiciary.
It’s incredibly important that we treat
people with respect and listen to them.”
After she’s reviewed a case, FitzSimon
may point out the weaknesses and
strengths she sees and give the parties a
chance to come to an agreement before she
makes her official ruling. “Sometimes if
the borrower can come up with any kind of
plan, any source of funds, the creditor may
be better off. Then they can both walk
away with half a loaf,” she says.
It takes more time in court to do things
this way, FitzSimon says, but it’s closer to
her idea of justice. She explains her
approach by employing the men-de
construction from Ancient Greek: on the
one hand this, on the other hand that.
{The C
o l l e g e
. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
“I’ve never been good at seeing things in
black and white,” says FitzSimon. “I think
the world is largely gray.”
In a bankruptcy court, helping each
party see the other’s side often leads to a
better solution. The creditor recoups some
money; the debtor regains a measure of
control in his or her life. There are days,
though, “when I can’t make magic
happen,” FitzSimon says. “There are the
days when someone has to lose their
house.”
After 30 years of impossible hours
FitzSimon is enjoying more free time: to
spend with her husband, enjoy Philadel
phia’s cultural offerings, and sample the
city’s fine restaurants. A former member of
the college’s Board of Visitors and Gover
nors, she hopes to become more involved
with the college again. But as enjoyable as
her job is, it can be unpredictable: “There
are days when I read the pleadings and it
looks like an easy, straightforward case.
Then the lawyers start talking, and it’s
‘whoa, Nelly, bar the door-we’re going to
be here a while,”’ she says, “It’s not always
pretty. But it’s justice. And it works.”
�38
{AlumniProfile}
A Sense of Place
Francois Levy (SF87)
BY Anna Perleberg (SFoa)
orn in Paris and raised in the
U.S., Francois Levy gradnated
from the Santa Fe campus in
r987. He’d come to St. John’s
“1 thought architecture
sounded
at the tender
age of inter
i6, and
esting, so didleft
diplomacy
foreign
withoutand
a clear
direction.
service. So I applied to a lot of different
grad schools, and the architecture schools
accepted me.” This Aristotelian accident
led him to a career he loves.
Levy moved to Austin (where he still
lives with his wife and three children) to
attend the University of Texas’ first profes
sional degree program for students who,
like him, had not studied architecture as an
undergraduate. It was during a srx-month
internship in Australia that he “finally fell
in love with architecture-before that we
were just dating.” After graduating with
his master’s in 1993, he plied his new trade
with several noted Austin firms, while also
teaching at UT and, in 1995, working
briefly in Paris on a new bne of the Metro.
Architecture, says Levy, is as much
science as art-perhaps more. “While you
make use of your artistic faculties, in the
end, you have to end up with a building
that people can inhabit.” The most
B
gorgeously conceived structure is
useless if it doesn’t stay up. But
there’s certainly a creative dimension-“pure functionality leads to
things like strip malls. There’s a
really fine line you have to walk
between self-indulgence and prac
ticality, between ego and humility.
You have to invest yourself in the
building or it won’t be any good.”
On the other hand, when an archi
tect becomes too self-centered,
“you get buildings neighbors love
to complain about.”
In May 2008, Levy received
another UT graduate degree, this
time in architectural engineering.
He’d returned to school for a
variety of reasons-for one, he says, “I’ve
always been a frustrated scientist,” and the
refinement of techne offered by the disci
pline was “a way to scratch that itch.” But
he also, in the progress of his career in
mostly residential architecture, found his
concerns shifting from buildings them
selves to their interaction with, and impact
on, the environment. “I was working on an
8,ooo-square-foot house for empty nestersit wasn’t even their primary residence. I
kinda felt like a fiddlemaker for Nero.”
Levy’s attraction to the trend of sustain
ability comes from his concept of architec
ture as beholden to place, “the intersection
of climate, technology, and society.”
Houses were formerly built of necessity,
using materials at hand-earthen struc
tures in desert New Mexico, wooden cabins
in forested Wisconsin, half-underground
sod houses in treeless, humid Kansas.
Without climate control or artificial
lighting, buildings were oriented to take
advantage of sun and wind; the size of a
residence depended not just on the
comfort of the inhabitants, but the practi
cality of heating, cooling, and maintaining
the structure.
Technological advances in building tech
niques and materials have meant that,
provided with the means, homeovraers can
impose any look or style they want on their
dwellings, ignoring landscape and climate.
At its most innocuous, this attitude leads
only to incongruous eyesores, but as Amer
ican houses get bigger and families get
smaller, resource and energy consumption
per capita explode, negatively impacting
the disregarded environment. In a worst
case scenario, the sudden re-introduction
of the outside world can make ill-suited
Built around two relocated rooms of a
German homesteader’s cabin, Francois
Levy’s MoonRise Ranch was designed to
EXIST IN COMPLETE HARMONY WITH ITS SITE IN
THE Texas Hill Country.
{The College. Sf. John’s
College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{Alumni Notes}
daughter. Laurel, is fundraising
for La Clinica de la Raza in the
San Francisco Bay area and
attending graduate school at
California State East Bay.
“After 30 years of grueling trial
practice, I needed a change,”
writes MiKE PANTER (A). “I had
taught one class in litigation at
my law school, DePaul, and I
asked them about a full-time job.
Law professors are usually
credentialed academicians, which
definitely rules me out, but I
proposed a new idea. A small
class of law students sitting
around a table would meet to
debate and discuss a different
issue each week. Each week, a
different lawyer would pay the
law school $350 to bring in an
open issue on an active case for
the students and lawyer to
workshop together. I call it
‘Litigation Lab.’ The school
agreed to give it a try. Last night
we finished our 32nd session and
it’s a smashing success. Some of
the students call it the best class
they had in law school. Lawyers
come back for two and three
sessions. They credit us for giving
them thoughts and ideas that
directly lead to better results for
their clients. Everyone learns,
even the seasoned lawyers;
everyone teaches, even the
inexperienced law students.
People don’t leave-they hang
around talking long after class.
Whatever I do in this class, I
39
think always of what I did in my
year at St. John’s with my great
tutor, Eva Brann and classmates
like Chester Burke and Mike
Blaustein. If this program is a
success, it is certainly due to the
principles of learning that I
learned in even one year at
St. John’s, 38 years ago.”
and I engage in a collaborative
process of inquiry to generate
and test hypotheses regarding
the causes and effects of their
abrasive behavior. Late this year
I plan to open the Boss
Whispering Institute to share
this method with other executive
coaches.”
“I’m almost done with the
treehouse,” writes JEFF
ViCTOROFF (A). “Maia and Ivan
are jumping up and down! Next
week: our first sleepover.”
1977
1975
Laura Craws haw (SF) writes:
“Following the publication of my
book Taming the Abrasive
Manager: How to End
Unnecessary Roughness in the
Workplace (Jossey-Bass, 2007), I
relocated my coaching firm (The
Executive Insight Development
Group) to Portland, Ore. I
research and coach abrasive
bosses as part of my mission to
reduce suffering in the
workplace. Also known as The
Boss Whisperer, I will be
speaking at the Sixth Interna
tional Conference on Workplace
Bullying in Montreal this June.
I’ve put my St. John’s education
to good use, having incorporated
a technique I’ve termed Socratic
whispering into my coaching
method, through which my client
continued
houses the cause of needless human
suffering. Levy sees this as one of the
lessons of Hurricane Katrina: “I saw a
connection between how we choose to
develop on a large scale and the inevitable
effect of natural disasters. When you build
responsibly to the climate, when you don’t
have conveniences, it’s less of a hardship.”
His master’s project was entitled
“Indoor Air Quality Engineering Chal
lenges in Lunar Habitats,” based in part on
1979
Kevin W. Parker (A) writes:
Judy Kistler-Robinson (SF,
SFGI79) is baking for the fourth
summer in plain oT Texas. She is
a user-experience architect
(designing web applications),
which is the “best career for a
right-thinking person who
learned to be left-aligned at SJC.”
She volunteers as a literacy tutor.
1978
Lucy Tamlyn (A) just finished
up a three-year tour as Deputy
Chief of Mission at the U.S.
Embassy in N’Djamena, Chad. “I
am currently posted as Regional
Coordinator for the Kurdistan
Region in Erbil, Iraq. The
Regional Office is an outpost of
the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. We
represent the United States in the
region and coordinate U.S.
assistance in support of
reconstruction efforts. Children
Ben (16) and Filipa (13) are in
a paper he delivered (with J. Fardal) at the
2007 Rutgers Symposium on Lunar Settle
ments, exploring the impact of radon-emitting lunar soil in the hermetically sealed
environments future settlers might five in.
Concerns like these, though currently
theoretical, are a logical extension of the
idea of responsible architecture as
subservient to a location’s available
resources.
Though Levy has been practicing in his
field since 1993, with his own firm since
1997, he feels his career is just beginning.
{The College . S:. John’s
College ■ Fall 2008 }
boarding school in the U.S.; my
husband is planning some
motorcycle trips across Europe
and possibly all the way to
Central Asia. We are all hoping
the next overseas posting will be
easier for visiting friends and
family! ”
“I just received my diploma for a
master’s degree in astronomy
from James Cook University in
Townsville, Australia. The degree
program was quite an interesting
experience, all done through the
Internet and in some ways just
the opposite of the St. John’s
experience, as there was no
direct human contact at all unless
you count e-mail (which I don’t!).
I’m still working as a software
engineer at the Goddard Space
Flight Center and my wife, Tina
Rhea (also A79), and I
celebrated our a5th wedding
anniversary last year.”
1980
Gina Ironside (SF) and
Ben Goldstein (SF79) report
that their son, Ben, is 13 and that
the family is still enjoying home
schooling. He and his dad are
both playing soccer intensely.
“One of the really beautiful things about
architecture is that you don’t really hit your
stride until you’re 50. You peak when
you’re 70. Hot young designers maybe the
darlings of the magazines, but their work
isn’t necessarily profound-the profession’s
not like football, more like baseball. Or
curling.”
More about Levy's design philosophy
andphotos ofhis work can befound at
francoislevy. com.
�{AlumniNotes}
40
Making a Case for Endangered Forestland
Abby Weinberg (SFoo)
BY Brooke McLane-Higginson (AGI09)
n her work as manager of the
Conservation Research Program at
the Open Space Institute in New
York City, Abby Weinberg (SFoo)
finds the ideas of John Locke and
Adam Smith helpful in under
standing the challenges to conserving the
nation’s endangered forest and farmland.
It isn’t easy balancing private property
rights and free markets with the less
tangible benefit of a forest as a good in
itself, but Weinberg uses research to
make the case for conservation-with
good results.
Weinberg brought her enthusiasm for
the outdoors to St. John’s, where her
studies of Smith and Locke helped her
better understand the formative philoso
phies driving human’s interaction with the
natural environment. After graduating
from St. John’s, she worked as an economic
analyst for the Federal Trade Commission.
Four years later, Weinberg earned a
master’s degree in Forestry at the Yale
Progress needs to be considered not just from the standpoint of what we produce from
School of Forestry and Environmental
FORESTS, BUT ALSO BY WHAT WE GAIN BY LEAVING THEM AS THEY ARE, SAYS AbBY WeINBERG (SFoo).
Studies. She worked as a forest technician
at the City of Seattle’s 90,000-acre water
shed before joining the OSI in 2004.
agriculture than the market would other
destroying it. However, these days, land
The Institute protects scenic, natural,
wise dictate. On the other hand, “Adam
prices are driven more by development
and historic landscapes to ensure public
Smith argues that agriculture is inherently
than the potential for forest products.
enjoyment, conserve habitats, and sustain
contrary to economic development,
Development speculation has driven prices
community character. Weinberg’s work
because division of labor doesn’t apply to
three or five times what can be justified for
focuses on evaluating and developing tools
forestry conservation, she says.
agriculture,” Weinberg explains. “The
for the conservation of actively managed
same person plows, sows, and reaps,
It’s part of Weinberg’s job to make a case
forest and farm landscapes in the
making it hard to increase production
for the value of preserving forests. One of
United States.
without increasing labor costs.”
her first research projects at OSI was to
Although one-third of the country is
In her work at the Institute, Weinberg
complete an assessment of conservation in
forestland, “people don’t necessarily see
relies on economic research and land
Massachusetts for the Kohlberg Founda
the value of standing forestland,” Wein
use analysis to recommend changes to
tion. Her work led to the creation of an
berg says. “Some of this goes back to Locke conservation and public policy. Up until
entirely new grant program for conserving
and his idea about labor and ownership.
2000, the amount of forestland in the U.S.
forest and farm landscapes in the area and
The labor of clearing trees and planting
was actually increasing as marginal farm
the dedication of another $6 million
agricultural products is evidence of owner
land was allowed to return to forests,
towards land protection.
ship, whereas people assume the forest is a
explains Weinberg.
With lessons from Locke and Smith,
public resource that takes care of itself and
The picture changed dramatically as
Weinberg has found a way to address both
isn’t necessarily worth paying for even
suburban sprawl, fed by rampant real
natural and economic issues by researching
though it is the source of our clean air
estate speculation, began encroaching
how to conserve forests while using their
and water.”
more urgently on forests. “In the tradi
resources sustainably. The traditional idea
Such ideas have made agriculture more
tional analysis of forestland prices you
of progress, that is, the conversion of our
prominent in our society, Weinberg
don’t assume someone is going to cut the
natural resources for economic goods, she
explains. Agriculture receives more
entire forest at once,” she says. Instead,
says, “is in many ways no longer valid when
government subsidies and funding than
“you need to know what you can earn from
we recognize the values lost when a forest
forests, to the point that more land is in
sustainably harvesting the land” without
is cut down.
I
{The College. Si.
John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{AlumniNotes}
Ben is coaching, too. Ben’s web
engineering company. End Point
Corporation, is doing beautifully
(visit endpoint.com). Several
Johnnies have turned up among
their recruiting respondents!
Gina attends the alumni seminars
in New York City from time to
time, and enjoys Scottish country
dancing: “The balls remind me of
St. John’s waltz parties, only
better, with the men in full
highland dress (kilts). Best wishes
to all.’’
“We have enjoyed looking at
colleges with our 17-year-old
daughter, Michelle,” says
Debra Ann Rutherford (SF).
“St. John’s College is still
the best!”
1982
Stanley Schiff (SF) has been
practicing tai-chi and chi-gong
for 35 years. “I became a certified
Lifetime Practitioner who uses
both modern healing techniques
and the ancient energetic and
spiritual techniques of China and
India.”
1985
Jeffrey Wilson (A) serves as
associate dean of the College of
Communication and Fine Arts at
Loyola Marymount University in
Los Angeles, where he has taught
philosophy since 1995. “As a
hobby, I participate in recitals
and other events for amateur
classical pianists. One of my best
St. John’s memories involved
Douglas Allanbrook giving me
the combination to the Steinway
in the Great Hall for early
morning practice, where
housekeeping staff would listen
from the balcony. Today, I
practice on a restored 1897
Steinway and take special
pleasure in sharing live classical
music with those who may
otherwise have no access to it.”
1986
privilege of working with an Iraqi
intelligence officer who was by far
the best officer in the division, if
not the Iraqi Army, and we put
many insurgents behind bars, or
in the ground, and won the
hearts of the people in our area
well worth the trip.”
Todd W. Masilon (A) has just
returned home from a year in
Baghdad working as an
Intelligence Operations Advisor
to an Iraqi Army battalion,
“ready to hang up my captain’s
bars after 10 years in the Army.
I’ve been away from wife, Renee,
daughter Molly, and son Ian for 3
1/a of the last 3 years (training/
Afghanistan/Iraq), audit’s their
turn now. I have a new job already
as a contractor working with the
Army Test and Evaluation
Command. I’m glad to be back as
the first seven months of the
deployment were consumed by
daily fighting in the main AlQaeda stronghold in Baghdad at
the time (we fought alongside our
Iraqi battalion in the one square
mile of B’dad with the highest
density of insurgent activity in all
Iraq). It was sad, horrifying,
frustrating, and terrifying on a
daily basis. Fortunately, I had the
Barbara A. Roberts (SFGI)
made her eighth visit to the
Pilgrim Center of Avatar Meher
Baba in Meherabad,
Ahmednagar, Maharashtra State,
India.
1987
“My husband and I welcomed our
second child, Samantha Danielle
Lewin last July,” writes Sallie
M. Fine (A). “Samantha and her
now 5-year-old brother,
Benjamin, made their first visit to
St. John’s for Homecoming this
past September, and while I’m
not sure if there is a second
generation of Johnnies in our
future, everyone had a great
time. I am head of the English
department at Charles F. Brush
High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio,
“Absolutely Proud”
lizabeth Natterman (Ara) has made Jeff
Natterman (AGI93) a happy father: “I want to
E
41
and I am grateful every day to
have a job in which I can always
find meaning.”
After years of teaching,
Elisabeth DuRard Keller
(SF) is currently Director of
Education Programs at the Santa
Fe Children’s Museum. “It was
great fun working with fellow
alum Jason Scott until he left
for graduate school at Stanford in
June and much fun working with
current Johnnie interns. Past
development director at the
college. Ginger Roherty, is also at
the museum and we enjoy talking
about our shared connections. I
recently attended a wonderful
afternoon of tea and poetry at
Will (SF86) and Janette
(Hradecky, SF85) Fischer’s.
Love raising my family and
enjoying the sky in beautiful
Santa Fe.”
1989
Jennifer Lee (SF) writes:
“Dimitri, I, and our daughters,
Fani (14) and Maro (ri), are
happy in Baltimore. I am
teaching fifth grade at the Park
School and loving it. I will finish
the Johns Hopkins Creative
Writing program this fall and
plan to start guitar lessons again.
I have also taken up running in
my middle years (who would have
thought!) and have completed a
few triathlons.”
share how absolutely proud I am that 15 years
after I graduated from the Graduate Institute,
my daughter is now a freshman on the same
Earlier this year George
campus. When I first was accepted into the
T
urner (A) acquired an electric
program in the early 1990s, Elizabeth was only about ayearbike
to make his nine-mile
and-half old. We toured the campus, and my wife, Donna, took
commute to and from work, to
a picture of us in front of the Liberty Tree. For years, I boasted
save on gas, and to save the
of my life-altering experiences at St. John’s. And foryears Eliz
planet: “So far I’ve only used it
abeth listened to my stories, intrigued by the tales of my
three times. So much for
having taken classes in the cupola, pausing the conversation
grandiose plans.”
each time the bell rang. Or, my silly refutation of the asymp
totic triangle as a mere intellectual play on words. Last week,
we watched Elizabeth shake Chris Nelson’s hand after her
name was called at the Convocation ceremony, and receive her
Greek lexicon. I nearly burst with pride. I only wish the
Liberty Tree was still around so I could take a new picture with
her when she graduates. Now that’s priceless!”
{The College. Sf.
John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
�4a
{Alumni Notes}
it up in the slam pit that formed
late in the night, amongst a
group of rabbis, Talmud scholars
and Israeli settlers that
responded to the Hassidic band’s
rendition of a popular Nirvana
ode. In June, Michael and Yael
returned to Hollywood, Cahf.,
where Michael runs a law
practice concentrating on trial
work in the areas of criminal
defense, personal injury and
employment litigation.
Jessica Trupin (A) is returning
Blake Sitney (SF91) has been making a difference for orphans in Thailand. The Ban Mae Maeh
ORPHANAGE IN THE ChIANG MaI PROVINCE HAD BECOME UNREACHABLE DURING THE MONSOON SEASON AND WAS IN
DESPERATE NEED OF BOTH FOOD AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES. WiTH THE HELP OF A LOCAL RESIDENT NAMED JONG,
Sitney was able to deliver rice,
fruit, noodles, and other food, as well as school supplies to the
ORPHANAGE. SiTNEY ALSO PROVIDED THE CHILDREN WITH ART SUPPLIES SUCH AS CRAYONS, COLORED PENCILS, AND
WATERCOLORS SO THAT THEY COULD EXPRESS THEIR CREATIVITY. SiTNEY HAS CREATED A PHOTO ESSAY WEBSITE TO
SHARE THEIR ARTWORK WITH THE WORLD. HTTP://cOMMUNITY.LrVEJOURNAL.COM/aRTFORORPHANS/.
to the New York City area to
launch a startup nonprofit called
Bees Without Borders
(www.beeswithoutborders.org).
She expected to be in the city all
summer, just bringing husband
Dave and eight-year-old daughter
Bridget for the first couple
weeks, working on the nonprofit
and at the farmer’s markets.
Michael Zampella (A) and
1990
Kilian Garvey (A) was recently
named to the editorial boards of
The Journal ofSocial,
Evolutionary, and Cultural
Psychology and The Journal of
Evolutionary Studies. He is an
assistant professor of psychology
at the University of New England
in Biddeford, Maine.
thought to who might want to
place a baby for adoption. We are
so very glad to be parents.”
Geneva M. Fulgham (SFGI)
published a book about
secondary school teaching. Wit
and Wisdom Needed in the
Classroom (Rowman & Littlefield
2006). “I’m entering in national,
state, and local poetry contests
and sell the occasional opinion
essay,” she writes.
Lila Kerns (SF) and Kevin
Depew (Ago) are delighted to
Kevin (SF) and Khin Khin
Guyot Brock (SF88) are
delighted to announce the
adoption of their son,
Christopher Arden Brock, born
February 18, aoo8. “Christopher
is more wonderful than we
imagined,” writes Khin Khin.
“Christopher’s birth parents,
teenage sweethearts, are kept
informed of his development via
e-mail, photos and, in time,
visits. Thank you to all who saw
our earlier appeal and gave some
School (a prep school in Pebble
Beach): “I am married to a
woman named Andrea Price, and
we have an infant daughter
named Siri who was born on Nov.
7, 2007, and two spotted dogs. It
is quite a full house. I am
enjoying life here, balancing work
and time in the ocean with the
new responsibilities of
fatherhood. If you are in the
Monterey area, look us up.”
1991
“Retirement is enriching,” writes
Ronalie a. Moss (SFGI). “I am
rereading The Ramayana-a new
translation.”
1992
Charlie Henrikson (SF) is
living in Pacific Grove, Calif.,
teaching science at the Stevenson
{The College -5t.
announce the birth of their
daughter, Lucinda Lee Kerns
Depew (Class of 2029, expected),
born April i, 2008, in New York,
N.Y.
Michael Kopple (SF) was
married in Jerusalem in May
2008. His wife, Yael, is Israeliborn and hails from a family of 12
children who grew up in the West
Bank settlements. Luke Warren
(SF92) and his partner, Patricia,
attended the wedding. Witnesses
report that Luke was seen mixing
John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
his wife, Caitlin, are happy to
announce his commissioning as a
Naval Intelligence Officer in the
United States Navy Reserve.
“I want to reassure my fellow
alumni that this will in no way
affect my support of my alma
mater during the USNA/
St. John’s Croquet Match.”
1993
J. Walter Sterling (A) and
Meghan Haid were married at
sunset, on Father’s Day, June 15,
at the Hyatt Tamaya on the Santa
Ana Pueblo. In attendance were
alumni Noah Kay (SF92),
Elliott (A92) and Amy (Johns,
A91) Callahan, Melissa
Duke, (SFGI07), and Susanne
Ristow (SF06), playing her
cello, and tutors David Carl and
(of course) WALTER Sterling
(class of 1963), pere. The
weekend of vigorous celebration
included a long Friday night at
�{AlumniNotes}
the Cowgirl. Walter is a tutor in
Santa Fe. Meghan is a DPT
(doctor of physical therapy).
would love to hear from any of my
old friends via email:
deslong@yahoo.com.”
Stella Schindler (AGl)
1994
Colin (A) and Emiko (Ima)
Ray (SF) still live in Tokyo. Their
daughter, Marina, is 3. Son
Thomas Michael (Tom) was born
on January 8, 3007. They enjoy
meeting up with any Johnnies
who happen to be in town.
“John and 1 are very happy to
announce the birth of our second
son, Gilpin Edward Turkington
Ruhl,” writes IVY Turkington
(A). “His big brother Henry is
certain this guarantees him a
sailing crew member for the rest
of their lives, but I guess we’U see
whether Gilpin is captain or crew
material in about 8 years. Gilpin
was born September 34 (8 lbs, ii
oz, 30 inches) and we are aU
rejoicing much though sleeping
little.”
announces the release of her new
CD, Distant Hum.
1997
Patience Melnik (SF) writes:
“John Kochendorfer (SF95),
our three-year-old, Abe, and I just
moved from California to
Knoxville, Tenn. John has a post
doc at the National Oceano
graphic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) in Oak
Ridge, and 1 will attend the
graduate program for
architecture at the University of
Tennessee. We just tried chowchow for the first time and think
we’ll be all right here. If anyone
rolls this way, e-mail us at
patiencemelnik@gmail.com.”
1998
1996
Jennifer (Wamser)
Deslongchamps (AGl) has
indefinitely postponed work on
her doctoral thesis (she started a
PhD program in Medieval
Philosophy at Yale in 1997 and is
now ABD) in order to care for her
growing family: “Our son
Thomas Robert was born in
3000; Elena Margaret, 3003;
Camille Therese, 3003; Charles
Joseph, 3005; Zachary Louis,
3006 and our 3008 edition,
Stephen Benedict, was born three
months ago. Needless to say I
have been keeping very busy,
although I am woefully behind on
my reading! I remember with
great fondness my days in the GI,
discussing life’s deepest
questions with such wonderful
tutors and fellow students. 1
“I have made some big changes
(professionaUy) this summer,”
writes Dawn Star Borchelt
(A). “I left my position at the
Unitarian Universalist church
where I was Director of Religious
Education for 10 years. I will
continue to do some consulting
and contract work with UU
organizations and congregations.
but I also have enrolled in the
Birthing From Within Mentor
and Doula Certification program.
I am starting a private practice as
a childbirth educator and doula
in the Washington, D.C., area, so
if you are having a baby,
especially near the nation’s
capital, get in touch! I am doing
exactly what I want to do, and I
am working on remembering it
aU of the time. My spouse and two
young children, the dog, and the
birds are all fine, too.”
GlenScott Thomas Copper
(AGl) retired from teaching last
year and is finishing the novel he
began writing his first summer at
St. John’s in 1994.
Tobin Shulman (SF99) and
Julie Gronneberg (SF) report
that Tobin finished his master’s
in Architecture last May, and
Julie is the senior designer at the
MFA, Boston. “Our best design
project so far has been our sonLincoln Olav-who loves guitars,
the ocean, and dinosaurs,” and
turned 3 in July.
1999
George Finney (SF) graduated
from Southern Methodist
University’s Dedman School of
Law in May 3008 with a Juris
Doctorate.
From A to /J. Bottom
43
Kara Luna (Fenske, A) and
Richard Luna (Schmidt, A96)
are excited to announce the birth
of their daughter, Evie Teresa
Luna, on April 13, 3008. Mom,
dad, and baby are all healthy and
happy.
Sheridan Phillips (EC) is ABD
at the European Graduate
School.
From across the pond, Patrick
Reed (AGI) reports that he and
his wife, Jana, celebrated their
daughters’ 3rd and ist birthdays
this summer (Lucille and Anja,
respectively). They are loving life
in Europe and recently competed
in an ultra marathon
competition, in Davos,
Switzerland. Check out the
website at www.swissalpine.ch.
Mike and Abby Soejoto (both
A) are proud to announce the
first birthday of their third child,
Cecilia Anne (born June 3007).
Mike, Abby, Lucy (41/3), John
(almost 3), and Cecilia live in Los
Angeles, where Mike is a tax
attorney and Abby stays home
with the kids. They’d love to see
any Johnnies in the area (or hear
from any not in Southern
California) at
msoejoto@pircher.com or
asoejoto@sbcglobal.net.
2000
D. Read Lockhart (SF) was
awarded the Shapiro Grant from
the Art Students League in New
York City to paint in Europe.
Last spring, he was in Oslo after
having been to London, Paris,
and Amsterdam. He expected to
conclude his studies in Italy and
Vienna and return to New York in
September.
ow many heavy metal bands went by the name
“Absurdity”? We have Dan Nelson (A95) to
thank for the answer: seven. Nelson’s tome.
All Known Metal Bands, is simply that: an
alphabetical listing of every heavy metal band
(as of 3007). Opening with a quote from
For the past two years, Andre
Blaise Pascal, Mr. Nelson lists about 51,000 bands, including
30 different known “Genocides.” Learn more about Rodriguez (SFGI) has been
working as the staff attorney at
Nelson’s book, on his MySpace page: myspace.com/
the YMCA International Services
allknownmetalbands.
H
{The College-
St. John's College • Fall 2008 }
�{Alumni Notes}
in Houston, Texas, representing
immigrants, especially refugees
and victims of human
trafficking-modern day slavery.
In addition, he teaches an
undergraduate course at the
University of Houston.
Deberniere Torrey (AGI)
plans to marry fellow Penn State
comparative hterature graduate
student, Nathan Devir, on June
27, followed by a move to
Vermont in July. Nathan will
teach Hebrew at Middlebury
College and Deberniere will
continue working on her
dissertation and related projects.
2001
Colin King (SF) writes: “Anna
Canning (SFoa) and I were
married July 19 under an old
sugar maple on my family’s farm
in Clotho, Minn. An unusually
heavy rainstorm dropped more
than two inches before blue sky
appeared and sunlight filtered
through maple leaves. We were
blessed by the presence of family
and friends, including several
Johnnies.”
SUZANNAH LATANE SIMMONS
(SF) has been living in
Washington, D.C., for two years.
“A group of us SJC alums have
been working on fostering a
stronger chapter. There is now a
Facebook page for all interested
D.C. (and surrounding area)
alumni to join. Please check it
out. It is called St. John’s College
Alumni, Washington, D.C.
‘Social’ Chapter. As of June, we
have 66 members. I am working
at Whole Foods Market at
Tenleytown in the District. I am
an Assistant Team Leader for
their Specialty Department
(wine, beer, cheese and coffee).
Stop by and see me if you are in
the area. I make decent pairing
suggestions.”
2002
Jim Crotty (SFGI), of Monk
Media made his mark as the
“dashboard publishing” pioneer
of Monk: The Mobile Magazine
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M
onk_Magazine), author
(www.jamescrotty.com/),
multimedia auteur {Playboy,
Voyager), blogger
(WWW. crottyfarmreport. com),
media rep
(www.rumpleville.com,
www.HoleintheHeadmovie.com,
www.johnfrummovie.com
www.boristhedog.tv), and
filmmaker (www.resolved.tv).
With fellow ‘Monk’ Michael
Lane, Jim is the co-founder of
Monk Media (www.monk.com), a
global branding concern. Jim will
work with anyone who takes the
time to complete the Monk
survey at this link:
www.monkmedia.net/client/.
Patrick W. Harris (EC) begins
doctoral studies this fall at
Western Michigan University,
where he will focus on the history
of medieval Iberia.
The Sullivans have been busyas usual. Rachel (A) just
graduated from medical school in
May, and will begin her residency
training for psychiatry at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., in July. At the
same time she was promoted to
captain in the Army, and
continues to be among the ranks
of active duty soldiers. Michael
(SF) is nearing the end of his PhD
in Philosophy at Catholic
University, and hopes to finish
next fall. Clare celebrated her
4th birthday in May, and Grace is
looking forward to her 2nd
birthday in the end of July. The
girls are healthy, happy and
begging for more siblings!
“This May I completed my
Master in Arts in Art History
from the University of St. Thomas
in St. Paul, Minn.,” writes Laura
Thayer (A). “My master’s
qualifying paper was titled
‘Rebuilding Identity: The
Nineteenth-Century Faqade of
the Duomo of Amalfi.’ Now that I
am done with school, I look
forward to spending as much
time as possible in Amalfi, Italy,
continuing to study Italian,
figuring out what happens next in
my life, and maybe even getting
around to finally reading
Proust!”
2003
“I just finished my first year of
teaching philosophy at the
University of Nevada. Kathy is
working on her PhD in English
literature,” writes John Anders
(SF).
Meg Eisenhauer Barry and
Thomas Barry (both SF)
welcomed their second daughter
on April 27. “She shares her
mama’s birthday! Liesl Jane was
born at home on a beautiful
spring morning. She joins her
elder sister, Aviva, age 3, in
keeping our home a very lively
place indeed. Best wishes to all!”
Aaron Foster (A) is leaving
behind his “beloved” New York
City to move to Inman Square in
Cambridge, Mass., with his
girlfriend Eva: “Boston Johnnies
should feel free to look me up
(aaron.foster@gmaiLcom).
Recently, I’ve been consulting for
a major specialty food distributor,
mostly about cheese. In Boston,
I’ll be looking into opening a bar
focused on craft beer.”
Abram Trosky (AGI) is the
recipient of Boston University’s
highest academic scholarship,
the Presidential University
Graduate Fellowship. Trosky has
been Presidential University
Teaching Fellow for the
department’s introductory
courses in Political Science,
aty (Christopher) Davis (SFoi) writes: “Billy
American Politics and Interna
(Davis, SF02) and I are living on a beautiful
tional Relations, has solo taught
homestead in northwestern Oregon with my
Introduction to Political Theory
mother and our i-year-old son, Sam. We’re busy
and has guest lectured for
building our own cabin and raising chickens,
Modern Political Theory. A
goats, sheep, and alpacas-it’s wonderful to be
University
Scholar in Philosophy
exactly where we want to be. Though we haven’t yet reached
our
goal of self-sufficiency, we’re getting closer and are thoroughly
at Washington and Lee
enjoying ourselves. For now Billy is still commuting part time
University, Abram has been
into Portland, but expects to become self-employed by the end
steeped in classical pohtical
of the year; I am fortunate enough to be able to stay home with
theory and Socratic-style
our wonderful, adorable child and run the farm while helping
pedagogy, but has an abiding
my mother with her craft business. If anyone’s interested, we
interest in international relations
occasionally post on this blog: www.arcadiafarm.blogspot.com;
and postmodern political
and post pictures at: http;//si75.photobucket.com/albums
thought. He has studied abroad at
/wi37/samsilverlock/.” -tjk
Raising Chickens
K
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
�{AlumniNotes}
the University of Melbourne
under the auspices of The
Ashworth Centre for Social
Theory and in the U.K. as a
junior fellow of the EnglishSpeaking Union. Abram passed
his qualifying examinations in
February 3008 and is currently
in Vienna as a visiting junior
fellow of the Institute for Human
Sciences where he will be
researching the matrices between
cosmopolitanism, cognitive
development and moral
philosophy for his dissertation
proposal. At the termination of
his fellowship he plans to attend
the Institute’s intensive summer
program in International
Relations in Cortona, Italy,
before traveling from the Balkans
to Scandinavia with his
girlfriend. He will return to co
teach the History of American
Foreign Policy, 1865-present, at
BU this fall.
Namir Yedid (A) was appointed
“I’m serving my first tour as a
diplomat in the U.S. Foreign
Service in Rangoon, Burma,”
writes ChELSIA WHEELER (SF).
“Between political protests and a
major cyclone, it has been an
interesting experience so far.”
graduated summa cum laude
from the Dickinson School of
Law; he was also valedictorian.
2004
Suzanne Vlcek (SF, EC05) is
two-thirds of the way through
chiropractic school and looking
forward to starting her own
practice in the spring of 2010 in
the San Francisco Bay area: “I
will begin seeing patients at the
Palmer West Clinic, San Jose,
Calif., in January 2009, so if
anyone is in the area please stop
in and let me practice my skills.
This summer, I completed a 200houryoga teacher training
program and have begun
teaching classes on a regular
basis. Life is good!”
yth-grade dean at Pacific Ridge
School in Carlsbad, Calif., where
he teaches English and social
studies. “I’ve led the design of an
integrated curriculum and have
gathered administrative and
community support to make our
school carbon-neutral.”
Kelly Zeibak and Alexander
Kantner (both SF) were
married in the redwoods on June
21,2008, and enjoyed a
wonderful honeymoon in
Vietnam and Cambodia. They
recently earned their teaching
credentiasl, in mathematics and
English respectively, and are
currently teaching on the north
coast of California.
2005
Gregory W. Bair II (A)
Christopher DeManss (AGI)
is celebrating the worldwide
release of his first solo album.
The act is entitled Vib and the
album. The Letter K. It’s
available in stores and through
the Internet. A fair collection of
the songs was crafted while
attending St. John’s College. “In
other news,” he writes, “with
every day comes reflection upon
the beauty of my St. John’s
experience.”
Paul and Anita Fairbanks (SF)
are delighted to announce the
birth of their daughter, Charlotte
Eden, on May 20, 2008. “She has
brought us so much happiness.
We are living in Columbus, Ohio,
where Paul is studying business
in preparation for dental school.
I am simply enjoying
motherhood; my current
ambitions are to sing lullabies
and read great books aloud.”
45
Very Busy
ndy and Katie
(Lehner) Patton
A
(AGI05 and
AGI04, respec
tively) have
welcomed William
Kelly Patton (Liam) into their
little family. He joins hig brother
James (a), who is working on his
PhD in Dump Trucks; both keep Katie very busy. Andy is
interning at an investment bank in Nashville and starts the MBA
program at Vanderbilt this fall. “Send money,” they write.
Amy Taylor (A) writes: “I am
completing my PhD coursework
in clinical psychology at
Duquesne University in
Pittsburgh. In the past year, I
completed my MA in psychology
and a graduate portfolio in
women’s and gender studies. I’ve
recently made several conference
presentations and earned two
awards for my writing on identity
development and how individuals
represent themselves to others
(currently beginning research
into how we ‘write ourselves into
being’ on Internet communities).
Next year I will continue to teach
undergraduate courses and
practice psychoanalyticallyoriented psychotherapy with
clients from the Pittsburgh
community and from a local
liberal arts college. Missed you at
Croquet, hope to see you at
Homecoming.”
Jonathan Morgan and
Allison Kilgore (both SF) are
enjoying their third summer in
Seattle, and are slowly growing
accustomed to the intervening
winters. Allison is working as an
investment analyst at a
retirement finance company, and
Jonathan currently works as a
web editor at a dot-com well past
its glory days. He will begin a
PhD program at the University of
Washington in User-Centered
Design this fall. These two can
often be found palling around in
bars and coffee shops with Maia
{The College. St. John’s
College ■ Fall 3008 }
Swanson (SF03) and overheard
lamenting the dearth of Johnnies
and good green chili in the
Northwest.
2008
Shant Shahrigian (A) is off in
search of la dolce vita in Milan,
Italy, paying the bills by editing
for a new website. He tells his
fellow Johnnies: “Holla!”
What’s Up?
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 February;
deadline for the alumni notes
section is January 5.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404;
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
�{Obituaries}
James W. Stone, Class of
1955
Jim Stone of Arlington, Va.,
a retired linguist and active
St. John’s alumnus, died in a
boating accident on the Chesa
peake Bay on July 27 when his
i6-foot catamaran sailboat
capsized in a brisk wind,
Jim earned a doctorate in
linguistics from the University
of California at Berkeley in 1971.
His career as a linguist spanned
more than 40 years, nearly 25 of
which he spent as a supervising
linguist and language training
specialist at the U.S. Depart
ment of State’s Foreign Service
Institute in Washington, D.C.
There, he oversaw training in
various languages including
Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Nepali,
Amharic, and Persian. After
retiring from the State Depart
ment, Jim was Director of
Translation Services at the
Center for Applied Linguistics
for II years.
Sailing and music were life
long passions. Jim began sailing
at age 15 when he was a Sea
Scout, and he later sailed as a
member of the St. John’s Boat
Club. He loved choral music and
other vocal music in the clas
sical tradition, and for 30 years
he sang as a member of the
Cathedral Choral Society in
Washington. Classmate Dorothy
Olim, who attended some of his
choral performances, recalls
“seeing the joy on his face as
he sang.”
Jim traveled extensively for
work and pleasure in the U.S.
and abroad. He and his wife of
39 years, Crawford “Corky”
Feagin Stone, had been plan
ning a trip to Yellowstone
National Park to celebrate his
75th birthday, which would have
been on August 10.
Jim maintained close ties with
classmates and other members
of the St. John’s community. He
enjoyed being part of a Wash
ington area St. John’s alumni
reading group and, in 2005,
James Stone
served as the class of 1955
reunion leader.
Classmate Jane Gerber
Denison remembers Jim as
someone who was gracious and
“the quintessential
gentleman,” Others, like Sam
Kutler, recall his quiet intel
lect. Jim is also remembered for
his unassuming ways. His
great-niece, Allison Dietz
(Aio), recalls the way he intro
duced her to St. John’s without
saying a word-when she was
still in elementary school, Jim
gave her a St. John’s sweatshirt.
Among the St. John’s friends
who attended Jim’s funeral
service July 31 were Dorothy
Olim (Class of 1955), Jane
Gerber Denison (Class of 1955),
Emily (Class of 1955) and Sam
(Class of 1954) Kutler, Diana
Cartier (Class of 1956), Sandy
and Joe (Class of 1956) Cohen,
Nancy Eagle Lindley (Class of
1958), Mark Lindley (Class of
1967), and Paula DelPlain
Binder (Class of 1959).
He was president of the
Hunt Family Foundation,
a charitable trust set up to
serve nonprofit organiza
tions in the El Paso region.
He had recently been named
chairman of REDCO, the
Regional Economic Devel
opment Corporation of El
Paso, Las Cruces, and
Ciudad Juarez.
Mr. Hunt was actively
involved in economic devel
opment in the El Paso area,
having served as a board
member of the El
Paso/Juarez World Trade
Center and the Camino Real
Angels, and as a member of the
Paso del Norte Group. He was
on the boards of the New Mexico
Nature Conservancy, the El Paso
County Historical Society,
Project Arriba, the Trans-Pecos
Regional Center for Innovation
and Commercialization, and the
Lydia Patterson Institute.
After graduating from
St. John’s, Mr. Hunt studied law
at Golden Gate University in
San Francisco. He is survived by
his wife, Stacey, and their two
daughters, and had been eagerly
anticipating the birth of a son in
August.
Memorial contributions can
be made to Texas Tech School of
Medicine-Department for
Mental Health Research, 4800
Alberta Avenue, El Paso, Texas
79905; or The Nature Conser
vancy of New Mexico, 212 E.
Marcy St. Suite 200,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
87501-2049.
Marcel Fremont
Marcus Hunt (SF95)
(SFoi)
Marcus Hunt, businessman and
philanthropist from in El Paso,
Texas, died on June 24, 2008,
in La Jolla, Calif. A fourth
generation in the Hunt family
businesses, he served as the
financial manager for invest
ments of Hunt Companies,
Inc., and affiliate companies, as
well as the Managing Partner
for Hunt Holdings, L.P.
by Kee Zublin (SFoi)
There’s a story by
Gabriel Garcia
Marquez entitled “The
Handsomest Drowned
Sailor in the World”
that I never understood
until the morning I
Marcel Fremont
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
read Veronica Fremont’s
account of her son Marcel’s
burial.
Marcel David Fremont (SFoi)
died on June 25, 2008, when his
motorcycle collided with a truck
in Montana. He was traveling
around the country to visit
family and friends before he was
to begin his doctoral studies in
neuroscience at Washington
University in St. Louis.
Veronica described how at
Marcel’s burial the mourners
gathered around the grave site
to toss in a few mementos:
a $2 bill, a sprouting potato.
Then, as the attendants began to
lower the pine box, one whis
pered, “It doesn’t fit.” Atten
dants and foreman cranked the
coffin back to the surface, and
friends and family began strip
ping off pieces. The bereaved
removed poles, bolts and blocks
as they tried three times to
consign Marcel’s mortal
remains to the earth.
One of those present
commented, “He wasn’t ready
to go.” Marcel’s father, Rick
Fremont, countered that Marcel
was a “connoisseur of awkward
situations” and that he knew his
friends and family “weren’t
ready to let him go.”
Although I was not in that
group, as I read Veronica’s
account I could picture why
Marcel’s coffin wouldn’t fit: He
was simply too big for any hole
in the ground. Everything about
�{Obituaries}
Marcel was too big to go easily
into the ground: his shoulders
were too broad, his legs too
long, his heart and brain too
oversized.
And suddenly, I understood
Marquez’s story: A drowned
man washes to the shore of a
tiny island village. The man is
large, so large that the children
who find him at first think he’s a
ship or a whale. When they lay
him in one of the village homes,
there is barely enough room on
the floor. Even when they
merely look at the man, there is
“no room for him in their imagi
nation.”
The villagers grow to love the
man, whom they name Esteban,
and so they hold “the most
splendid funeral they could
conceive of for an abandoned
drowned man.” And, as they
carry him to the sea, they
become “aware for the first time
of the desolation of their streets,
the dryness of their courtyards,
the narrowness of their dreams
as they face the splendor and
beauty of their drowned man.”
They did not need to look at
one another to realize that they
were no longer all present, that
they never would be. But they
also knew that everything would
be different from then on, that
their houses would have wider
doors, higher
ceilings, and stronger floors so
that Esteban’s memory could go
everywhere without bumping
into beams...and they were
going to break their backs
digging for springs among
stones and planting flowers on
the cliffs...
My friend Marcel’s life was too
brief. But in 29 years, he knew
and loved many people, and it is
indeed true that where he has
been we look around and realize
that we are no longer all present
and never will be. It is also true
that we can fill the big empty
space he left behind with some
thing beautiful.
To make room for Marcel’s
memory, we can build wider
doors and higher ceilings, live
less confined lives, think bigger
thoughts. And we can honor our
friend by emulating his insa
tiable curiosity and creativity,
searching in unlikely places for
water to bring forth flowers.
Marcel could always see the
hidden potential of little things.
He was big that way.
In Marcel’s memory, parents
Veronica and Rick, and brother
Nathan, have established “The
Marcel Fremont Fund,” admin
istered by the Oak Park, River
Forest Community Foundation
(www.oprf.org). The fund will
make small donations for
causes related to education,
arts, sciences, recreation, and
the environment. For more
information, e-mail Veronica at
marcelsmom@comcast.net, or
visit Marcel’s memorial website
at www.marcelfremont.
com/wp.
Anjali Pai (SFGI08)
Last spring, the Santa Fe college
community lost one of its Grad
uate Institute alumnae, Anjali
Pai, who died March 30 from
injuries suffered in a car acci
dent the previous day. Anjali
completed the Liberal Arts
program in December 2007,
and those who knew her
remember her bright person
ality and love for education.
Born in Ottawa, Canada, she
earned a bachelor’s degree at
Lake Forest College and a
master’s from the University of
Toronto, where she focused on
the study of music. While in
Santa Fe, Anjali worked as a
tutor for at-risk Santa Fe teens
as part of the Advancement Via
Individual Determination
program, tutored at Santa Fe
Community College, taught as a
substitute at Santa Fe Prep, and
worked as a freelance editor. She
described herself as “proudly
Canadian, 100% (East) Indian,
surrogate Scottish, and over
identified with the underdog.”
Anjali wrote a novel at age 13,
rode horses, was an accom
plished singer and musician
(violin and piano), and directed
musicals when she was in high
school. She had read the
complete works of Shakespeare
long before enrolling in St.
John’s, and published more than
150 short stories on her website.
She had more than 1,000
Anjali Pai’s sister Tanya
RECEIVES AnIALi’s DIPLOMA FROM
President Michael Peters at
COMMENCEMENT LAST MaY.
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
47
friends worldwide with whom
she kept in touch.
The Pai Memorial Fund has
been established to provide
annual funding to a graduate
student who plans to become an
educator and hopes to make a
difference in the lives of chil
dren from disadvantaged back
grounds. The fund’s first recip
ient will be a fall 2008 graduate
student. To contribute to the
Anjali Pai Memorial Fund,
please contact Penelope
Bielagus at 505-984-6113 or
pbielagus@sjcsf.edu.
ALSO NOTED
Frank Bannerman (class of
1938), July 12,2008
William Barrett (class of
1956), May 17,2008
Victor Barton ( class of 1947),
DATE UNKNOWN
George Gerlach (class of
1953 June 23,2008
Rosemary Ingham (AGI95),
July 13,2008
Ogden W. “Peter” KelloggSmith (CLASS OF 1943) May 28,
2008
Edward Lee (class of 1952),
July 17,2008
Renee Ronelle Letven (SF69),
July 12,2008
C. Ranlet Lincoln (class of
1950), Nov. 15,2007
Jane Mill (SFGI85),
July 19,2008
Pasquale “Pat” Polillo (class
OF 1956), Sept. 4,2008
Charles Powleske (class of
1953), Aug. 1,2007
Michael Slota (SFGI86),
July 31,2008
John Williams (class of 1946),
July 17,2008
Gerald Zentz (class of 1954),
June 2,2008
�48
{Alumni}
Return of the Pioneers
July Reunion Brings Together Santa Fe's First Classes
BY Harold Morgan (SF68)
Tth the aid of a
decision to move Santa Fe’s Homeborrowed MacBook,
coming to the fall. During the summer
Bruce Baldwin (SF68)
of 2007, the idea of a summer reunion
tuned a harpsichord for emerged, and a group of alumni settled
Roy Stegman (SF68),
on a full week-July 13-19-of activities.
who was leading a tuto Phil Chandler (SF68) conceived of the
rial on “Bach’s Temperament
” in the
format,
and Lindsay Ridgeway (SF68)
Peterson Student Center. The
computer
pitched
in as organizing committee
provided the note-perfectly, of course
chair and treasurer. Organizing and
allowing Baldwin to tune each string to the
planning took place via e-mail, the
computer’s purity.
college provided meeting rooms for
In the tutorial, Stegman described a
the gathering, and Santa Fe Alumni
recently rediscovered keyboard tuning
Director Michael Bales (SF06) helped
system Bach used, and he demonstrated on
coordinate activities at the college.
the instrument: a 1968 harpsichord, an
Santa Fe President Michael Peters and his
appropriate choice for Santa Fe’s pioneering wife, Eleanor, hosted a reception
class of 1968. The tutorial was one of a
welcoming alumni and their families back
number of offerings-inteUectual and social- to campus.
organized by a group of alumni for a July
The reunion attracted 29 alumni from
reunion of the pioneers, their families, and
classes through 1971, 8 tutors and 35 others
members of the classes who shared the
including alumni from later classes. From
campus with them: the classes of 1969,1970,
as far away as Gbteborg, Sweden, alumni
and 1971.
came to see the remarkable changes to the
The self-organized reunion grew from
campus, catch up with one another, and
objections by some alumni to the college’s
enjoy a host of options for spending their
W
time in Santa Fe, from seminars and
lectures to an evening at the Santa Fe
Opera and a morning rafting the Rio
Grande. “It was a wonderful experience,”
says Rick Wicks (SF68), who with 5,000
miles to travel from Sweden was a vocal
proponent for a summer reunion.
“Usually at a Homecoming one only
knows one’s own classmates, because most
of the others are younger (or older) in
multiples of five years,” he explained. “But
here we had members from the next three
classes, not all of whom I knew before, but
all of whom I very much enjoyed getting to
know better. Organizing the reunion also
brought me into contact with members of
the class of ’68 who had dropped out before
I arrived in Santa Fe for my junior year,
again a very rewarding experience. By the
time my family and I arrived, participants
had already been there for several days, so
there was an active community into which
we walked. It felt very good.”
The reunion week featured six seminars
(including two on the Odyssey), led by
tutors emeriti, alumni, or both together. In
addition there were several tutorials,
including a session by Beth Kuper on the
Above, Joy Avery (SF68)
catches up with
TUTOR EMERITUS CuRTIS WiLSON (HA83), ONE
OF THE FIRST FACULTY MEMBERS IN SaNTA Fe.
Left, Claudia Nordstrom Larcombe (SF69)
AND Antigone Phalares
{The College -Sf.
John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
(SF68).
�{Alumni}
I Ching and feng shui. Tutor emeritus
Curtis Wilson (HA83, one of the first
faculty members on the new campus) gave
an informal lecture, “Reflections on Lunar
Theory,” and tutor Peter Pesic performed a
concert. Outdoor activities included the
rafting trip and a hike up Monte Sol. In
between scheduled events, alumni enjoyed
several ad hoc get-togethers, restaurant
meals, and gatherings in the homes of
Santa Fe alumni.
The closing event was a Quaker-style
meeting, led by Kuper and Phil Chandler,
focusing on the theme: “What have you
learned since leaving St. John’s?”
Maurie Wills Scott (SF68) was very glad
she made time to attend: “I realized what
wonderful friendships I had,” she said. “It
49
was easy to talk with people, and our shared
background laid the groundwork for recon
necting.”
Harold Morgan attended St. John’s in Santa
Fefor three semesters. An Albuquerque
resident, he is a syndicated columnist and
blogger.
Left, Enjoying the view from Monte Sol are Antigone Phalares (SF68), Gus Goldstein (SF68), Ellinor Garbring, Linnea
Garbring-Wicks, and Rick Wicks (SF68). Right, Jeff Hockersmith (SF69), at Sunday brunch.
The Pioneers
On October a, 1964, the opening day
of classes for the Santa Fe campus,
8a freshmen signed the college Register
at Convocation. Everything was new and
unsettled. After all, “colonizing a
college,” in the words of then-president
Richard Weigle (HA49), wasn’t easy.
The campus had three buildings: a
student center, one classroom building,
one laboratory building, and a cluster of
dormitories on the upper campus. One
women’s dorm had ground-level windows
facing south to the pinon trees. A year
later, to discourage male visitors, a spot
light was pointed toward the trees. On its
second night in place, the spotlight
turned a flashing red.
The Rolling Stones and the Beatles
were featured artists in common room
parties. There was no television on
campus.
Ford K. Brown was a kind of genial god
of the II tutors, bringing wisdom, humor
and deep experience to the classroom.
and
Hendrik
In February 1966,
St. John’s drew a visit
from Beat poet and anti
war activist Allen Gins
berg, who traveled to
campus in a 1960s icon,
the battered Volk
swagen mini bus.
For the pioneers,
their years at St. John’s
coincided with a time of
great social upheaval.
The graduation year,
1968, was marked by
momentous events: the
assassinations of Martin
Luther King, Jr., and
Robert Kennedy, a riot
at the Democratic
Students play a spirited volleyball game on the Santa Fe
National Convention in
CAMPUS IN 1964.
Chicago, and Vietnam
War protests.
culture, but lacking older models,
Looking back years later, Weigle
students had to figure things out them
wondered whether importing a seminar
selves, with the help of their tutors.
size group of juniors could have helped
And in time, they did. ♦
younger students adapt to the college
{The College.
St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 }
�5°
{Alumni Association News}
From the Director
OE Alumni Relations
Dear Alumni,
It’s been a busy couple of montbs in Alumni
Land, and if we’re running around, it’s
because you’ve been especially activeand believe me, we’re not complaining!
St. John’s alumni came out in unprece
dented numbers to support the college’s
capital campaign. When Jeff Bishop
(HA96) told us in aoo6 that the goal was
$125 million-by far the most ambitious
goal the college had ever attempted-I don’t
think anyone believed we would reach it
without a miracle. It turned out that the
miracle was you. With the inspirational
challenge from Ron Fielding (A70), we
alumni helped the college to not only meet
that goal, but to exceed it by more than
$9 million! Thank you!
Alumni participation in the campaign
really caused the college to sit up and take
notice of you, the only permanent members
of our community, and it prompted us to ask
the question: how can we work with the
Alumni Association to make our programs
better for you? I’m very grateful that a small
team of alumni, led by Ray Cave (class of
1948), has begun working together with an
outside consultant to tackle this very
question. The group is called the Alumni
Task Force, convened by our presidents,
Christopher Nelson (SF70) in Annapolis
and Michael Peters in Santa Fe. Other
members of the Task Force are Dave
Heimann (A87, vice chair), Jason Walsh
(A85), Steve Thomas (SF74) Patricia Sollars,
(A81), PheloshaCollaros (SFoo), Brett
Heavner (A89) Matt Calise (Aoo), Pam
Carter, (SFGI08), Jo Ann Mattson (A87),
and the college’s vice presidents for
advancement, Barbara Goyette (A73) and
Jim Osterholt.
The Task Force met for the first time on
October 23. If there had been an opening
question it would have been, “How can the
college better serve its alumni and how can
our alumni better serve the college?” We
barely scratched the surface in attempting
to answer that question after four hours of
discussion. And we all have homework
due by the next meeting on November 13:
to research alumni programs at other
comparable colleges. We’re all really
excited about the impact the committee’s
work will have on the future of alumni
relations at St. John’s.
Another new development on the alumni
front is the amazing growth of activities in
alumni chapters and groups. To keep up
with the expanding endeavors of our chapter
leaders, the college has hired a new parttime employee in the Alumni Office. Torii
Campbell joined the Annapolis team,
although she will be working with alumni
groups across the country, as coordinator of
regional chapters and groups. You can look
forward to Torii helping your chapter plan
parties, seminars, and other activities, as
well as work to get the word out about these
events to the broader alumni community.
Feel free to send her an e-mail to introduce
yourself. She’d be happy to hear from you at
torii.campbell@sjca.edu. Thank you to all
the chapter presidents whose efforts with
alumni have made this position a necessity.
Finally, I need to say a word about the
current alumni directory project managed
by Harris Connect. First, a little history: up
until eightyears ago the Alumni Association
used a significant portion of the money they
received from your alumni dues to pay for an
alumni directory that was delivered free of
charge to all alumni. Contact and employ
ment information was gathered from alumni
every five years, and the college used this
information to update its database. About
seven years ago, the Alumni Association
decided to support the college’s onhne
alumni community. But unless we continue
to sohcityour most recent contact and
career information we will not have an
up-to-date database.
Harris Connect is the company we’ve
always used for this project; indeed, Harris
is pretty much the only game in town when it
comes to producing print directories. Their
arrangement is that they will gather the data
for us for free and offer you a directory for
sale. I understand it costs as little as $80 for
{The College -St.
John’s College . Fall 2008 }
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
elected 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 - Jason Walsh (A85)
Vice President - Steve Thomas (SF74)
Secretary - Joanne Murray (A70)
Treasurer - Richard Cowles (A70)
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
the book and as much as $120 for the book
and CD. I appreciate all of you contacting
Harris and giving your time to update our
records, but I’m concerned about the
reports I’ve heard about some aggressive
sales representatives on the Harris end. I’m
sorry about this, and I’m working with
Harris to resolve it. Please don’t feel an
obligation to buy the book. It is expensive,
although a treasure for alumni, with photos
and personal stories-more fike a yearbook
than a phonebook. Again, it’s very impor
tant for the Admissions, Career Services,
and the Advancement offices to have your
most current information, so we are all very
grateful for your participation.
The Harris directory is not intended to
replace our online Alumni community
(which is still free). It’s an excellent resource
for staying in touch with your classmates,
sharing your news and photos, career
networking, and finding Johnnies wherever
you go. Find out more at:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu/
Thanks to all of you who attended Homecoming in Annapolis and Santa Fe! We’U
talk more about that in the next issue of
The College.
Keep in touch,
Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
Director of Alumni Relations
jamattson@sjca.edu
�{Alumni Association News}
51
It’s Always Homecoming for the Annapolis Chapter
""There are Memories Here ”
“We had 15 participants for the first
ike most women, Annapolis
seminar in 2002,” Gammon says. “It was a
chapter president Beth
great start. We typically have about 12 to 20
Martin Gammon (A94)
participants, but there are certain readings,
juggles career and family
such as Shakespeare, that draw a specific
with one or more other
crowd.”
passions. In Gammon’s case,
Typically,
it’s St. John’s College, where she has
rein participants include both
and graduate alumni who
vigorated the Annapolis chapter undergraduate
of the
range in age from 20 to 80. “There is a
Alumni Association. Her husband, Alex
wide range of life perspectives in the mix,”
(A94), is one of her biggest supporters, but
says Gammon. “I find the different lenses
they can’t attend chapter meetings
together. “We take shifts to take care of our to be fascinating and welcome the chance to
revisit Program readings now that I have
two-year-old so one of us can attend the
had more life experience. But we’re all still
monthly chapter seminar gatherings,” she
Johnnies, still approaching the readings in
says.
the same way.”
When Gammon joined the Annapolis
Last spring, the group read and
chapter in 2001, the chapter had been inac
discussed Thucydides over three seminars.
tive. With assistance from the Alumni
In September they went more modern, with
office, she built a network and began
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford.
sending postcard announcements about
chapter seminars. Alumni are on the invita Madame Bovary was planned for October.
“We do a mix of literature from the
tion list; spouses and friends are usually
Program and some philosophy,” says
welcome. A core group of regulars attends
Gammon. Gammon acknowledges that her
the monthly seminars, held in the private
dining room in Randall Hall. This dedicated family’s busy lifestyle helps drive the
chapter’s reading list. “When I have more
group includes Paula Binder (class of 1959),
time we’ll do more philosophy,” she
Melvin Bender (AGI05), Jerome May
explains. “Right now, with a two-year-old, I
(AGI92), Joan Vinson (AGI81), Valerie
don’t have enough time to prepare those
Garvin (A96), Charles Green (AGI02), and
readings!”
retired tutor George Doskow and his wife,
In the future. Gammon hopes to work
Minna (AGI71).
L
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Robert Morgan, SF76
505-^75-9012
rim2u@c0mcast.net
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon,
A94
410332-1816
emartin@crs.org
AUSTIN/SAN
ANTONIO
Toni Wilkinson, SGI87
512-278-1697
\vilkinson_toni
@hotmail.com
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn, SF76
847-922-3862
ricklightburn@alumni.
stjonnscollege.edu
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Paula Fulks, SF76
817-654-2986
puffjd@swbell.net
DENVER/BOULDER
Elizabeth Jenny, SF80
303-530-3373
epj727@comcast.net
HOUSTON
Norman Ewart, A85
BOSTON
Dianne Cowan, A91
713-303-3025
norman.ewart@rosetta
617-666-4381
resources.com
diannecowan@rcn.com
Beth Martin Gammon helped to rejuve
THE Annapolis chapter by organizing
monthly seminars.
nate
with her fellow volunteers to launch an
occasional social event, such as an evening
gathering at the Boathouse. For now,
socializing is informal, as attendees stroll
over to a nearby restaurant after seminar.
“We’re lucky to have the familiar turf of the
campus,” Gammon says. “We don’t have
the challenge of convincing people to come
to an unknown place. There are memories
here.”
—Patricia Dempsey
MADISON
Consuelo Sanudo,
SGIoo
608-251-6565
sanudoc@tds.net
PHILADELPHIA
Helen Zartarian, AGI86
2i5-482r5697
helenstevezartarian@
mac.com
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles,
SFGI95
505-986-1814
rcowles2@comcast.net
MINN./ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman, AGI94
612-822-3216
Freem013@umn.edu
PHOENIX
Donna Kurgan, AGI96
623-444-6642
dakurgie@yahoo.com
SEATTLE
James Doherty, SFGI76
2o6-542r344i
jdoherty@mrsc.org
NEWYORKCITY
Daniel Van Doren, A81
914-949-6811
dvandoren@
optonline.net
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray, A70
724-325-4151
Joanne.Murray@
basicisp.net
SOUTH FLORIDA
Peter Lamar, AGI95
305-666-9277
cplamar@yahoo.com
NORTH CAROLINA
Rick Ross, A82
919-319-1881
Rick@activated.com
Elizabeth Ross, A92
Elizabeth®
activated.com
PORTLAND
Jennifer Rychlik, SF93
503-547-0241
jlr43@coho.net
NORTHERN CALIF.
Reynaldo Miranda, A99
415-333-445^
reynaldo.miranda@
gmail.com
{The Coll
eg e
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico, A86
619-429-1565
srico@sandi.net
SALT LAKE CITY
Erin Hanlon, SF03
916-967-2194
e.i.mhanlon@
gmail.com
• St. John’s College • Fall 2008 }
SOUTHERN CALIF.
Jan Conlin, SF85
310-490-2749
conlinjani@yahoo.com
Providing
OPPORTUNITIES
FOR MORE ALUMNI
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ed Grand,! A77
301-351-8411
egrandi@aoLcom
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Peter Weis, SF84
413-367-2174
peter_weis@
nmhschool.org
TO CONNECT
MORE OFTEN AND
MORE RICHLY
�5a
{St. John’s Forever}
his picture from 1900 evokes
lacrosse, basketball, baseball, football, and
two bygone aspects of life at
tennis. The college’s biggest rival-espeSt. John’s College: the days
cially in lacrosse and football-was Johns
when the college fielded
Hopkins University. Compulsory military
teams in many different
training was discontinuedin 1923, the
intercollegiate competitions,
same year the college switched to an elec
and a time when military trainingtive
wassystem. President Stringfellow Barr
compulsory for every student. These
to intercollegiate competition
put John
an end
nies, posed with their trophies, were part
soon after the New Program began in 1937.
of a strong athletic program at the college.
In 1908, the college began construction
In addition to track, students also
on what was to become Iglehart Hall,
competed in boxing, fencing, crew.
named for Lieutenant Edmund Berkeley
T
{The College-
St. John’s College • Fall 2008 }
Iglehart, an 1894 graduate who was a base
ball and football star and later returned to
the college as a faculty member. Next year,
the college will mark the looth anniversary
of Iglehart Hall, where runners put in laps
on the suspended running track, and fierce
intramural competition takes place on the
basketball court.
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
:a
Alumni Calendar
■roquet; i
St. John’s College vs. the United States
Naval Academy, in the quest for the
Annapolis Cup
Piraeus 2009
Join us in Santa Fe or Annapolis--and this
year, in Washington, D.C.-for Piraeus, the
college’s continuing education program for
alumni.
I p.m. Sunday, April 19
Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,
led by David Starr and Keri Ames
January r6-18, aoog, Santa Fe
Cost: $375 person, including all seminars,
receptions and Sunday brunch.
Registration and payment deadline is
January 5, aoo8.
Milton’s Paradise Lost, led by Eva
Brann and David Carl
June 4-7, aoog, Annapolis
Cost: $400 per person, including all
seminars, receptions and Sunday brunch.
On-campus room and board is $200 per
person for three nights. Registration and
payment deadline is May 15, aoog.
Stendhal’s The Red and the Black,
led by Michael Rawn and Ned Walpin
June 14-19, aoog, Santa Fe
Lee Branner (A07) brought her grandfa
ther, Frank Branner, to campus for a
Piraeus weekend on the Odyssey.
The week begins with a welcome dinner
Sunday evening. The program will consist
of seven seminars spread over the week.
There will be a morning and an evening
seminar on Monday, Tuesday, and
Thursday. The final seminar will take place
Friday morning followed by a closing
lunch. Wednesday is a free day to enjoy
Santa Fe and prepare for the final three
seminars.
Cost: $475 per person, including all
seminars, lunches, and dinner on Sunday.
On-campus room and board is $350 per
person for five nights.
Registration and payment deadline is
May 33, 3009.
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 }
Shakespeare In Performance
King Lear, led by Louis Petrich
and Jon Ihck
Acting Instruction by Shakespeare
Theatre Company’s Academy
for Classical Acting
June i8-ai, aoog
Harman Center for the Arts,
Washington, D.C.
In collaboration with Washington’s
Shakespeare Theatre Company, this
combination seminar/performance-based
workshop will feature stimulating scholarly
discussion integrated with an exploration
of the actor’s craft and approach to classic
text. This weekend is packed with activity,
beginning with a Thursday noon
registration, a tour of the new Harman
Center for the Arts, an afternoon seminar
and Shakespeare Theatre Company’s
performance of King Lear. Mr. Petrich
and Mr. Tuck will participate in the
performance workshops and lead two other
seminars before the closing session Sunday
afternoon.
Cost: $990 per person, including all
seminars, ticket to performance otKing
Lear, instruction, breakfasts, receptions
and tours.
Registration and payment deadline is
June 5, 3009.
�STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
Published
by the
Communications Office
P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
ADDRESS service REQUESTED
Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
Paid
Annapolis, MD
Permit No. 120
�
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<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
Description
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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.
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Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
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52
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The College, Fall 2008
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Volume 34, Issue 3 of The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2008. Misnumbered as volume 3.
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St. John's College
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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2008
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pdf
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The College Vol 3, Issue 3 Fall 2008
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Hannifin, Jenny (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor)
Deger, Ann
Luell. Sara
McLane-Higginson, Brooke
Perleberg, Anna
Spiegelman, Deborah
Johnson, David
The College
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6b8d06ce38e6a21ddf56bf9ce5c6de77.pdf
10f3c0274f819bdc99f5ccb9601c60c5
PDF Text
Text
SPRING
.
2- 0
ANNAPOLIS
-..
0
5
�SPRING
THE
VOLUME
31,
0
THE MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI OF ST. JOHN 'S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA
2,005
I SSUE
FE
{CONTE NTS }
PACE
IO
DEPARTMENTS
2
BOATHOUSE REPUBLIC
Spending a sabbatical at St. John's gives
the president of Randolph-Macon College
a glimpse of sports and the Program.
PACE
14
BROTHER ROBERT
He came as a visitor to learn more about
the great books program; he ended up
becoming a treasured member of the
St. John's community.
PACE
8
PAGE
14
18
PROFILES
30 On "Marketplace" David Brown (AGI95)
talks business.
34 Newspaper editor Julia Goldberg (SFgr)
Annapolis tutor John Verdi points to the
writers who most influenced Nietzsche,
including Emerson, Plato, and Pascal.
likes to make waves.
38 Nathan Wilson (AGio1) unveils shroud
mysteries.
PAGE
18
44 STUDENT VOICES
A Johnnic ponders what it means to be a
member of a community oflcarners.
NIETZSCHE HAUS
In Sils-Maria, a Johnnie revisits the ideas
of her senior essay.
PACE
28 BIBLIOFILE
21 ALUMNI NOTES
WRITERS
23
LETTERS
Annapolis tutor Eva Brann shares
aphorisms in Open Secrets/Inward
Prospects.
NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITE
PACE
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
Michael Peters settles in.
A new dean in Annapolis.
A conversation across generations.
Grappling ideas-and more-in Santa Fe.
Warren Spector (A81) funds
Annapolis dorm.
46 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
' FOREVER
48 ST. JOHNS
26
CROQUET
There's always next year.
PAGE
26
ON THE COVER
Nietzsche
Illustration by David Johnson
2
�{FROM
THE
{FROM THE BEL L
BELL TOWERS}
A NEW DEAN IN ANNAPOLIS
MICHAEL P ETERS
On the Job in Santa Fe
It's been a busy six months for
Michael Peters, president of the
Santa Fe campus. On January 17,
he arrived in his office in Weigle
Hall, and a few hours later,
donned academic robes to
deliver his first Convocation
address to January freshmen.
Then the college's Board of
Visitors and Governors arrived
on campus for four days of
meetings, and the pace has
hardly slacked ofT since.
In spite of a busy schedule,
Mr. Peters has made it a priority
to set aside time to get to know
students and the Program by
sitting in on seminar with the
January freshmen. Although he
is juggling a great deal of out-oftown travel, he's been able to
make at least one seminar a
week and hopes to continue
with the JFs through most of the
summer. He does the reading,
sits in the side chairs-as
prospectives and other guests
do-and takes in the conversation. As a West Point graduate,
former career Army officer, and
most recently, former executive
vice president of the Council
on Foreign Relations, he particularly enjoyed the discussions
on Thucydides.
"There is so much in Thucydides that directly paraUels the
world today," he says. " Right
now on the global stage we are
dealing with many of the same
issues and facing many of the
same challenges."
He also was a member of a
senior essay committee on
LIBERAL ARTS
AND CITIZENSHIP
From Mr. Peters' Convocation speech, January 17,
2005
" ....You and I will be participating actively in this intellectual
community-a community which believes chat a liberal education is good for its own sake, but is also crucial for citizens of
our country and our world if, as former Dean Scott Buchanan
wrote in the college catalog from the late '30s, we are to:
'Distinguish fact from fiction, between principle and case,
between opinion and insight, between propaganda and
instruction, and between truth and falsity.'
"These attributes of citizenship are as important now as
they were in the dark days prior to World War II. Today, our
nation honors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, who
demonstrated that the ideas and character of one man can have
a profoundly positive effect on many.
"It has become almost a cliche to say we are part of an
interconnected and complex world-a world that faces profound
issues of war and peace, poverty and plenty, disasters, plagues
and pestilence both natural and man-made, to name a few.
These issues require thoughtful and informed public debate if
we are to come up with imaginative and workable solutions.
Dealing with these problems makes a liberal education not a
luxury, but a necessity. In the individual and collective choices
we must all make, bumper stickers won't do and you won't find
bumper stickers at St. John's." ♦
{T
THE
Co
LL
B .
The Brothers Karamazov-one
of the highlights of his St. John's
experience to this point.
Observing January freshmen
take their first tentative steps in
the Program and participating
in a senior's culminating experience gave him appreciation for
the growth a student experiences in four years at St. John's.
There's also a great deal
of work to be clone in cultivating relationships with the
community and the state of
New Mexico. A step in that
direction was hosting the
state's Summit on 21st Century
Competitiveness on campus.
The event attracted state
leaders including Gov. Bill
Richardson and U.S. Sen.
Jeff Bingaman to the
St. John's campus.
The schedule for Mr. Peters
and his wife, Eleanor, won't
slow down much this summer.
He'll be busy greeting visitors
to the campus who come for
Summer Classics, hosting his
first Homecoming in July, and
getting ready for his October z8
inauguration. At his request,
the inauguration ceremony
will be simple and without
much fanfare.
St. John's College . Spring 2005 )
ELEANOR AND MIKE PETERS HAVE
BEEN ON THE ROAD, MEETING
ALUMNI AND FRIENDS.
"There isso
much in
Thucydides
that directly
parallels the
world today. "
MICHAEL PETERS,
SANTA FE PRESIDENT
St. John's students continue
to surprise him with their
diverse talents and extraordinary thirst for learning. " I often
reflect on these young men
and women and what their
contributions will be to our
world. They're learning,
through the Program and the
method, to address the most
important questions life asks of
us-helping them learn not what
to think, but how to think." ♦
-ANDRA MAGURAN
Shortly after President
Christopher Nelson announced
that tutor Michael Oink (A75)
was selected dean of the
Annapolis campus, Dink
received both "congratulations
and condolences" from his
colleagues.
The congratulations referred
to the great honor it is to be
selected by one's peers for
such an important position.
The condolences-most meant
in jest-spoke to the burdens of
the job: long hours spent in
committee meetings, hiring
and tenure decisions, meting
out justice in disciplinary
issues, and making other
difficult decisions that affect
the lives of students. It's also
not easy to take a long breakfive ye ars-from the classroom.
"It's true that tutors regard
ourselves as model learners,"
says Dink. "And there's always
the sacrifice of giving up our
primary activity for a while.
It's probably love for the
community as a whole that
motivates any tutor to want to
be dean. You have the chance
to see that St. John's is the best
that it can be."
Dink looks forward to
moving into the dean's position
July 1, succeeding Harvey
Flaumcnhaft, who served for
eight years. " It's an opportunity for a more thorough and
deeper involvement with the
college," he says. "It's a
challenge."
He feels fortunate that
his predecessor made great
strides in his years as dean: in
faculty development, support
for students, and forging bonds
with Santa Fe. "I'm very grateful to Harvey- he's left things
in great shape," he says.
After spending a year-ancl-ahalf at Harvard, Dink entered
St. John's as a Febbie. A high
school English teacher had
suggested the great books
program at St. John's, but at
the time Dink believed, "I
could get the same thing at any
good school." However, in his
philosophy classes, Oink found
his professors lecturing from
notes or teaching their own
books. He wasn't reading the
books he wanted to read and
wasn't encountering many
students who were serious
about their studies.
He returned to Harvard after
an unsatisfying first year, but
by the middle of sophomore
year, his thoughts returned to
St. John's. "J spent the reading
period for my exams at Harvard
filling out the Febbie application," he says.
After St. John's, Oink went
on to graduate study in philosophy at Catholic University.
Five short years after graduating from the St. John's, he had
{ T THECo
.
TOWERS}
completed the coursework for
his doctorate and was back at
St. John's as a tutor in Santa Fe.
"I knew I would like to be a
teacher, and the idea of coming
back as a tutor had been in the
back of my mind through grad
school," says Dink. In the
summer of 1980,Dink received
a call from Robert Bart, then
dean in Santa Fe, who needed
to fill a last-minute appointment. Dink flew o ut for an
interview and joined the
faculty.
WHILE MICHAEL DINK (A75) WILL
MISS THE CLASSROOM, HE IS LOOK·
ING FORWARD TO THE CHALLENGES
OF BEING DEAN.
In 1984,he transferred to
Annapolis where he also served
as co-director of athletics, first
with tutor Bryce Jacobsen
(class of 1942), and later with
Roberta Gable (A78). He was
then and remains a big fan of
St. John's College . Spring 2005 }
3
the college's intramural
program. " Intramm·als allowed
me to play sports, and I became
a pretty active athlete," he says.
Dink received a grant from
the National Endowment for
Humanities that allowed him to
spend a year pursuing questions in the works of Plato and
a second year leading a faculty
study group and delivering a
lecture.
Dink's three-year term as
director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis from 1998 to
2001 was good preparation for
the dean's office, he believes.
"I t's on a much smaller scale,
but the responsibilities are
similar-you're involved with
other segments of the college
community, publications,
financial aid, transcripts, being
responsible for students. It
does give you some sense of
what's required in the dean's
office."
Dink looks forward to
working with "all segments of
the community, including
Santa Fe, supporting younger
faculty, and just hoping to find
ways to keep things running
smoothly." Among the changes
scheduled to occur in his
deanship is the discontinuation
of the Febbie program in
Annapolis, with the last class
entering in January 2006.
(The program will continue in
Santa Fe.) Does he have mixed
feelings, since the Febbie
program allowed him to enter
St. John's when he was ready?
While it's hard to see traditions
go, Dink says, the decision
was in the best interest of the
students.
"Febbies get a truncated
version of the Program, and it
puts a lot of stress on the students," he says. "In recent years
most Febbies have been students who would have come in
the fall ifwe had let them." ♦
-ROSEMARY HARTY
�4
THE
{FROM
THE
so-YEAR CONVERSATION
When women from the first coed graduating class at St. John's
returned to the college for a day with women of the current
graduating class, we did what we always do at St. John's: have
conversations. From a leisurely lunch to a seminar on John KeaLs'
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Virginia Woolf's "On Not Knowing
Greek" to a dinner at the Boathouse, a steady flow of conversation
continued, tying 1955 to 2005 as solidly as the conversation in a
freshman seminar ties new Johnnies to Socrates and Agamemnon.
Toward the end of the evening, Missy Skoog (Ao5), who
helped organize the day's events, spoke of the inspiration the
women of 1955provide for women of the current class. It was an
inspiration of which I was not much aware before meeting the
women from 1955. In my own experience at the college, I have
only recently thought of my presence as a woman in addition to my
presence as a student. The struggles I have experienced and the
ways I have questioned the Program and myself have felt very
personal. It is only recently that I have seen the ways I share those
struggles with others.
Over meals with Barbara Brunner Kiebler (A55), Cornelia
Hoffman Reese (A57) and Emily Martin Kutler (A55) , J saw that
the uncertainty I'm going through as I'm about to graduate is
perhaps a natural result of having a Johnnie's philosophical bent
and widespread interests. At lunch, Kiebler told Samantha Buker
(Ao5) and me a life story that included four children, graduate
courses in mathematics, and a law degree she earned in her 40s.
It put my own varied plans in perspective. I'm someone interested
in questioning and experiencing, like Johnnies have always been.
This interest is clearly what brought the first women to the
BELL TOWER S }
{FROM
college. Everyone I asked said t hey were not aware of making
history when they decided to come to St. John's. Though Kiebler
said she felt "on display" once she arrived at the college, the
decision co attend was based on a love oflearning rather than a
conscious effort to change the status quo.
Reese said she fell in love with St. John's as soon as she saw that
questions and answers were "part of the learning process ... for
both the students and the faculty." She said she had often been
told in high school, "That's a very good question, Miss Hoffman,
and I'm sure you realize why we don't have time to answer it." At
St. John's, she encountered a very different attitude toward asking
questions. "I felt like I blossomed," she said. "I felt like all my
eagerness to learn had a place to go, and a way to get there."
Talking to the first women at St. John's was fun and comfortable. We shared the common ground of the St. John's Program,
and therefore had a base from which Lo compare and consider
our life experiences. Carolyn Banks-Leeuwcnburgh (A55), who
couldn't make the event, but shared her memories in a phone
conversation, said she believes the Program produces this ease of
connection by being "so different and unique, it's timeless."
Though much of what I realized that day had to do with the
similarity of all women and of all Johnnies, I was also deeply
impressed by the courage the first women showed in coming to
such a deeply intellectual school at a time when there were doubts
on all sides as to a woman's ability to handle such a thing. Women
were alJowed to apply to St. John's in 1951 because of several
issues, according to Barbara Goyette (A73, vice president for
advancement in Annapolis). These included then-president
Richard Weigle's commitment to co-education, low enrollment at
the college, and a strong interest among women in attending
St. John's. When the women did enroJJ in 1951, they came in spile
of resistance from some
tutors and students.
Goyette said, " The men
were unsure socially
about how it would
change the campus, and
they were unsure that the
women could do the
work.AJ1ofthatchanged
very quickly once the
women came."
The women did
encounter some prejudice. Leeuwenburgh
remembers being Lold in a
don rag, in response to
the character of her
opinions, that she should
"go make babies." Reese
continued on p. 5
LONGTIME ST. JOHN'S
LIBRARIAN CHARLOTTE
FLETCHER (HA69, CENTER
TH E
B E L L
hornbcams, loblolly pines,
sycamores, dogwoods, red oaks,
and maple trees.
N EWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
In late March, the Santa Fe
can1pus hosted the New Mexico
State Summit on 21st Century
Competitiveness. The summit
brought together senior
New Mexico business and
community leaders with national
economists, industry and policy
experts, and federal policymakers to discuss the state's
higher education and workforce
challenges in the new economy.
President Mike Peters gave the
welcoming remarks and introduced Gov. Bill Richardson and
U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman.
The summit addressed one of
the state's thorniest problemsthe continuing drain of the
state's educated young people to
other states. After graduation,
the majority of college students
in New Mexico tend to leave
the state for better-paying jobs
elsewhere.
In his opening remarks,
Peters pointed out that St. John's
College actually helps reverse
this trend by attracting and
keeping college-educated people
in the stale. The college recruits
students from nearly every state
and several foreign countries,
yet approximately 25 percent of
St. John's graduates remain in
New Mexico after finishing their
studies. Currently almost 1,000
alumni live in New Mexico.
Approximately 31 percent serve
as teachers in public and private
high schools, as professors at the
state's colleges and universities,
and in the state's Department of
Education.
5
TO WE R S }
AP POI NTMENT S
In Annapolis: RUTHANDERSON
COGGESHALL
has been appoint-
development field. Arasteh
replaces RoBERTA G ABLE (A78),
who has moved from the Career
Services office co Admissions,
where she is associate director.
In Santa Fe: P ENELOPE
B ENEKOS (SF99) has been
named advancement officer.
Prior to her return to the Southwest, she taught English in
France, traveled throughout the
Mediterranean, and worked in
development at the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston.
St. John's in Annapolis received
a Plant Award (People Loving
and Nurturing Trees) from the
Maryland Department of Natural Resources for undertaking an
urban forestry program several
years ago. The inventory counted 118trees on the campus at the
time. Since then, another 90 or
so have been added, says Blythe
ed director of major gifts. Previously she was chief development
officer for the National Gallery
of Art, where she completed the
museum's New Century Fund
campaign and redirected the
gallery's development efforts to
solicit major gifts nationally and
locally. She also held leadership
positions at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine.
SrEFANlE TAKACS (A89) joins
the college as director of annual
giving from Abraham House in
the South Bronx, where she was
assistant director of operations
and development director.
Takacs had been a volunteer
fundraiser in Philanthropia
since 1998 and served as the
events committee chair for
Woods, the college's horticultur-
several years.
cation, "Girl Scout/STUDIO
ist. The college carefully tracks
the health of its trees, she adds.
Although the college and
community still miss the
magnificent Liberty Tree, the
campus is rich in American
is the
new Career Services director in
Annapolis. She brings to the
college more than six years of
experience in a variety of private
and p ublic settings in the career
2B Advisor Self-Study Guide."
The program was created for
older girls age II-r7, a group
that often loses interest in
ANNAPOLIS ENVIRONMENTAL
AWARD
SlWtRZAD ARAsTE:11
STUDENTS
ELIZABETI-1 V EGA (SFo6)
received an Excellence Award
from the Girl Scouts for a guide
she wrote to help orient leaders
of a new national program aimed
at keeping teenage girls in valved
in scouting. The award is given
annually co individuals whose
innovative contributions
significantly advance the work
of the council.
Vega wrote a 68-page publi-
scouting ♦
continuedfrom p. 4
remembers that some of her male classmates would make a point
of challenging women when they demonstrated propositions in
math class. Both women chalked this up to a lack of maturity on
the part of some of their classmaLes. Reese said that she felt "just a
little" hostility that seemed to come mostly from younger men
who didn't know how to handle the presence of women.
The women, regardless of these difficulties, acquitted themselves admirably. Goyette said, "They surprised everyone. I think
they surprised themselves." They returned to St. John's 50 years
laLer, confident in the abilities St. John's had given them, ready to
encounter another seminar. I hope to carry myself with that sort of
grace and ease someday. I hope I am as available to share questions and conversation as all these women did that day. I hope I am
ready to aim for the heart of any conversation, as Emily Kutler did
when she pursued the true intent of Woolf'sessay. I hope I will
walk, as Barbara Kiebler did when she accompanied me to a class
on Einstein and Minkowski, unhesitatingly toward any chance to
keep learning. ♦
TOP) JOINED 2005 AND 1955
CLASS MEMBERS FOR A
SAMANTHA BUKER (AOS) ANO SARAH CROOKE (A55) HAVE MUCH TO TALK
CELEBRATION OVER CROQUET
ABOUT DESPITE A SO-YEAR DIFFERENCE.
WEEKEND.
{ THE
C o COLLEGE
. St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
�6
{FROM THE
JOHNNIES GRAPPLE WITH
MORE THAN IDEAS
Jiu-Jitsu Takes H old in Santa Fe
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a new
addition to the martial arts
offerings on the Santa Fe
campus, but it's become
enormously popular in just a
few short months. C.J. McCue,
who joined the Santa Fe staff as
student activities coordinator
eight months ago, is an accomplished martial artist whose
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes
have attracted more than
30 students and inspired
several Johnnies to
enterand win-national
competitions.
During spring break,
McCue and seven ofher
students o·aveled to Las
Vegas. Nevada. to compete in a submission
wrestling tournament
for no-gi grappling and
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. 1\vo
ofMcCue's students,
Alex Kongsgaard (SF05)
and Quinn Mulhern
(SF07), both blue belts,
took first place in their
divisions. McCue took
second place in the
women's advanced
~
division and third place ;
in the open-weight
!
women's division.
z~
]\1:,::Cue teaches
•
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in
the Gracie style, which was
created for self- defense. This
martial art relies upon body
mechanics and leverage rather
than strength, so a small person
can win against a bigger or
heavier competitor. That's one
reason the sport is popular with
women, says McCue.
There are two types of
Jiu-Jitsu: Brazilian, or modern,
was developed after 1900,
while Japanese Jiu-Jitsu is
considered traditional and dates
to pre-1900. Like many martial
arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu requires
a technical knowledge of
specific positions, development
of physical and mental strength,
and the use of strategy. However, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is
unique in that most of the
techniques involve grappling
on the ground. "Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu practitioners learn how
to defend themselves on the
ground," says McCuc. " Of
course this has enormous
real-world benefit as a selfdefense method for both me n
and women."
The clothing (gt) looks like a
traditional martial arts uniform
ofloose white pants and jacketstyle wrap shirt secured with
a belt.
"The gi is a very instrumental part ofBrazilian Jiu-Jitsu,"
says McCue. "Thegi can be
used as a way to control one's
opponent."
Most of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
techniques involve specific
positions. There are takedowns,
{ THE COLLEGE,
{FROM
BEL L TOW ERS}
self-defense techniques, and
striking, but the core of the art
involves mental so·ategy. That's
part of the appeal to Johnnies.
Competitors strive to improve,
maintain, or defend their
ground positions, along with
mastering submissions such as
chokes and armlocks.
Both Kongsgaard and
Mulhern apply themselves with
vigor to the martial art, as they
have with other endeavors.
After Kongsgaard graduated
from high school, he walked
500 miles from the CaliforniaOregon border to San Francisco, averaging 2,2, miles a day.
In addition to continuing his
wrestling training, Kongsgaard
ALEX KoNcscAARD (SF05) 1s
WRESTLED TO THE GROUND BY
QUINN MULHERN (SF07).
is an avid cyclist, a rock climber,
and a member of the St. John's
Search & Rescue team.
Mulhern aJso brings intensity
and dedication to his training,
says McCue. Mulhern's older
brother practices Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu and persuaded him to
take up serious study. "We
would wrestle, and I saw that
my brother's submission
St. John's Collese. Sprins 2005
}
movements were not angry, but
graceful and re laxed," he says.
He credits McCue, "a great
teacher," with helping him win
in Las Vegas. "She is able to
demonstrate something
physical in a way people really
respond to," he explains.
The psychological aspect of
competing is the most difficult,
says Mulhern, who practiced
breathing and visualization
techniques to enhance his
performance. "Adrenaline can
be one of your biggest enemies
because it can cause you to use
your energy right away," he
says. He credits his winning to
feeling calmer. "It's one thing
wrestling in class or wrestling
with your friends, but
another competing in a
tournament where you
have only four minutes
and you can easily
forget everything
you know. It's a lot
of pressure."
McCue looks forward to getting more
students involved in
sports at St. John's.
"While some Sc. John's
students are not very
physically active when
they first arrive at the
college, they find themselves in a community
of like-minded individuals and feel more
confident when they
discover the benefits of
physical activity," she
says. "You see students
make a connection to
something physical-whether
it is a martial art, climbing,
Search & Rescue, hiking,
skiing, winter camping, or
intramural activities. They run
with it because they've become
inspired by all this at a later
time in their life. For some it's
just the beginning." ♦
-ANDRA MAGURAN
TH E
B ELL
TO WERS}
7
NEw DORMITORY Is A GIFT FROM ST. JoHN's ALUMNUS
Spector Hall to Open in January
Warren Spector (A81) has
given the coJJege a generous
gift to fund, in his father's
memory, the building of a new
dormitory on the Annapolis
campus. Spector Hall, as the
dorm now under construction
will be named, together with
Gilliam Hall, which opened
last fall, will allow the college
to house 80 percent of its
students on campus.
Mr. Spector, President
and Co-Chief Operating
Officer of Bear, Stearns &
Co. Inc., a leading Wall
Street investment banking
and securities trading and
brokerage firm, says his gift
was motivated by his appreciation for the education he
received at St. John's.
"St. John's provides a
unique educational experience," said Mr. Spector,
a member of the college's
Board of Visitors and
Governors. " Building
this dorm will help
preserve the intimate
learning environment that
sets St. John's apart from
other liberal arts schools."
The college needs new
dormitories for two reasons.
Overcrowding in existing
dorms required the college
to convert some double
rooms into triples and
appropriate a few common
rooms for housing. The
college also wants to better
nurture a community of
learners by ensuring that
students who want to live on
campus can do so. I mpressed
by the recent renovation of
Mellon Hall's classrooms and
laboratories, Mr. Spector was
pleased to provide a gift to
further improve student life.
"The St. John's educational
experience is not limited to the
classroom. The ability for
students to learn from each
other is greatly enhanced by
living together on campus."
Mr. Spector continued, " For
me the dialogue with my
fellow students was a crucial
part of my education. I could
not be more pleased to further
the education offuture
generations by funding the
creation of a place for that
dialogue to take place."
Spector Hall wilJ house
40 students when it opens in
January 2.006. The dormitory
includes spacious common
areas, suite-style rooms, and
a tutor's apartment.
The building will be named
Spector Hall in memory of
Warren Spcctor's father, who
died in 1990. Philip Spector
had forged over his lifetime a
AN APPRECIATION FOR HIS ST. J OHN'S EDUCATION PROMPTED WARREN
SPECTOR TO FUND A NEW DORMITORY ON THE ST. JOHN'S CAMPUS.
"One cfthe most valuable tools I
gainedfrom my St. John s education
was the abtfity lo think critically. "
WARREN SPECTOR, A8I
{ THE
COLLEGE·
St. John's Collese · Sprins 2005
}
successful career as a contractor who was responsible for
numerous residential,
commercial, and industrial
projects in the Washington,
D.C., metropolitan area. "I
very much wanted to find a way
to honor my father. It seems
fitting considering his long and
successful career as a builder
that a structure is named for
him. It is my hope that he
would have been extremely
pleased with the results,"
Mr. Spector said.
Ironically, both of Mr.
Spector's parents were
initially concerned when he
announced his plans to
transfer from Princeton and
start again as a freshman at
Sc. John's. " It did not take
long for my parents to see
that I thrived in the environment of St. John's College,"
commented Mr. Spector.
"By the time I graduated,
they were big fans of the
St. John's education and
were pleased that I did not
go to college anywhere else."
One of several St. John's
alumni working at the top
of the investment field,
Mr. Spector credits the
college with providing him
with skills that have helped
him succeed in the fastpaced and ever-changing
world ofWall Street.
" One of the most valuable
tools I gained from my
St. John's education was the
ability to think cri tically," said
Mr. Spector. "In the highly
analytical and technologically
sophisticated world in which
we live, the ability to think on
one's own and make sense of
the seemingly endless data
that exists should not be
underestimated." ♦
�8
{LETTERS}
{LETTER S }
VARIED VIEWPOINTS
I must respond to Mary Campbell
Gallagher's rejection of Martin A. Dyer' s
diversity initiative. Ms. Campbell's principal objection is that Mr. Dyer relies on the
premise that different "life experiences"
will somehow enrich the college's seminars. She insists that he "present proof."
Well, I can-and so, I believe, can any
St. John's alum.
....Anyone who has gone through four
years of the Program knows that people
bring their "life experiences" into the
seminar room. Male, female, veteran, gay,
married, black, Mormon, elderly, handicapped, Orthodox Jewish-can anyone be so
naive as to believe that such factors don't
influence how we approach a text? This
doesn't mean surrendering to subjectivity.
But it does mean expanding the Annapolis
campus beyond affluent suburbs of Washington-Baltimore and New York City, the base
for the student body when I was a student.
No one is advocating affirmative actionthat is, preferential treatment to someone
because of his or her background. But the
college effectively makes decisions all the
time about the makeup of the student body
by the way it recruits and where. If the
college makes a concentrated effort to
increase diversity, it can only result in
livelier class discussion by including
more and varied viewpoints.
STEVE WEINSTEIN, A95
ON DIVERSITY
I agree with three statements in the letter
from Mary Campbell Gallagher (A6o)
published in the winter 2005 issue of The
College: (1) "all men are fundamentally the
same ...."; (2) "All men are educable without regard to the peculiarities of their ethnic
and racial backgrounds;" and (3) " ... students' racial and ethnic characteristics
[make] no discernible contribution to
their being able to read and think well."
I disagree, however, \.vith other assertions.
I do not believe that the Opportunity
Initiative is inconsistent with the college's
mission of providing a liberal education.
Although the college makes its unique
program equally available to, and welcomes
everyone, its recruitment efforts have not
been equally successful in attracting all segments of the population. A major purpose of
the initiative is to determine the reasons for
this failure and to work with the Admissions
office in devising corrective measures. Our
goal is to broaden the college's appeal to
people who do not now seem to understand
learn to function well in both, to speak and
act according to the expectations of each.
They can competently participate in and
contribute to ongoing St. John's dialogue
seen through the lens of upper middle-class
people of European heritage. But to feel safe
enough to share the particular lessons life
has taught them and to relate their own
unique backgrounds to the topics and readings being considered in seminar would
require the safety of numbers and the college
community's appreciation of the richness to
be gleaned from different heritages.
I know college recruiters, with the
support of alumni of color, are making
good-faith attempts at increasing the
diversity of students and faculty. I hope they
arc successful for the sake of all students.
that its program is also intended for them,
not change either the program or admission
policies.
The great books are indeed teachers, and
close reading of them and good logic arc the
principal means by which conversation is
advanced. Other factors also play an important role. "[P]eculiarities [borne] of...race
and ethnic backgrounds" are among them,
as are differences in economic status,
religion, nationality and personal life
experiences...My views of freedom and
justice, for example, are affected by the fact
that I am black, am two generations removed
from slavery, and grew up in Baltimore in
the 1930s and 40s and attended college in
Annapolis when racial discrimination and
segregation were still the way of life.
Blacks were denied basic opportunities....
I suggest that interactions among students
both in class and in their day-to-day social
lives are a vital part of teaching and learning.
In other words, the encounter of individuals,
separately and in concert, \vith the great
books is indispensable to St. John's unique
education.
MARTIN
PATIENCE GARRETSON SCHENCK,
POETIC PLANCK
I enjoyed Anna Perleberg's poem "Relativity"
in the Winter 2005 issue of The College. As
" Relativity" did mention haiku in the last
stanza, Joffer one ofmy own in response:
Late autumn
Reading Planck
In the cold room ...
A. OYER, AS2
SHARING LIFE LESSONS
LUCIA STAIANO-DANIELS, SF04
A recent letter suggested that diversity has
nothing to do with learning at St. John's;
that, on the contrary, it is the books that are
our teachers. I disagree. If we learned only
from the books, students could sit in their
rooms and read them by themselves. Rather,
it is the exchange of ideas that leads us to
enlarge our understanding of what the books
can teach us.
An African-An1erican student who has
been stopped by the police for "driving
while black" understands the relationship
between justice and power differently than
the daughter of a judge who sits beside him
in seminar. Someone who grew up in a working-class church with a ministry to the poor
understands the parables ofJesus differently
than someone from a place of worship
attended by the privileged. A Muslim reads
Genesis differently than either a Christian or
a Jew. These differing backgrounds and perspectives can greatly enrich the exchange
that takes place around the seminar table.
The challenge for the college is to attract
sufficiently large numbers of students and
faculty from diverse backgrounds to affect
the culture of the college. Members of
minority groups have learned to live in two
cultures, that of their ethnicity and that of
the dominant group they have encountered
in school and other public venues. They
{ 1' n ll Co
LL E c E .
St. John's College . Spring 2005
Cuss OF l'.959
WEIRD SCIENCE
... .Infatuation, it seems, is frequently
the outcome of a close encounter with
Dr. Einstein's work, but I think we would aJJ
agree that St. John's College strives not only
to expose its students to the works of great
thinkers, and to impress upon its students
the importance of giving those thinkers
their due, but also it strives to equip its
students to be critical of what those thinkers
have to say. Education, Plato reminds us,
involves entrusting the cultivation of your
soul to another, so it is only prudent to exercise some caution (Protagoras 312c-313b).
As a theory ofrelativity, Dr. Einstein's
work should be properly understood as one
of reciprocity.
...A strict interpretation of relativity,
however, is no longer tenable. Relatively
well-known experiments with muons and
atomic clocks have demonstrated tha t
"clocks" moving at high speed do slow
down. Here is where things get peculiar.
A strict interpretation of relativity would
require that people riding on high-speed
airplanes see the clocks down on Earth slow
down. When the travelers return to their
earthbound comrades, there should be a
grand argument as each group asserts that
)
the other group's clocks were rwming slow.
Instead, there is agreement: the travelers
are younger than they would be if they had
stayed at home, and the difference is more
or less what Dr. Einstein's equations predict.
It is, then, a matter of fact, that relativity
effects are not reciprocal.
Oddly, then, experiments of this kind
demonstrate that there actually is such a
thing as absolute space, for we obviously
can decide who was moving and who was
standing still by seeing whose clocks were
slowed and whose were not. Further, until
someone can find a place where clocks run
faster than they do here on Earth, relativity
actually supports the claim that the earth is
absolutely at rest. But wait! It gets stranger:
if the Earth is at rest, then, since we see the
sun , moon, stars, and planets moving across
the sky, the evidence suggests that everything revolves around the Earth. And jL1st
to top it off, if everything revolves around
the Earth, then, since the universe is now
regarded as infinite, there is no reason not
to regard the Earth as the center of the
universe. Oh! The progress we've made!
At this point, the door stands "vide open
to supplement Dr. Einstein's theorywhich indeed, provides nothing beyond
what Aris to Ile would label a formal causeby reintroducing the aether as the material
cause, and so take a step towards developing
an account on the level of the efficient cause
(which is what any of the natural sciences, as
studies of how the material world works,
should strive to achieve). It would be most
mysterious , however, to use the very theory
that killed the aether to resurrect it.
Weird science? You'd better believe it.
But, at some point somebody will feel
emboldened to declare it to be nonsense,
and, at that time, there will be some need for
clear heads who can distinguish the baby
from the bath water. We all, I think, not only
hope, but expect that St. John's will be the
institution o f higher learning where those
heads get clarified ...
}OHN NEWELL, A86
__________
-'-'-.;;.;.;.
EINSTEIN OMISSION
Your capsule biography of Albert Einstein
on the inside cover of the [Winter 2005)
issue omitted two critical facts. The first
is that Einstein was a Jew. Although this
omission can be excused because it is a
matter of general knowledge, it is widely
assumed that because Einstein was never a
"religious" Jew his Jewish heritage was of
merely accidental significance until the
Nazis decreed otherwise.
9
l CAN IDENTIFY ONE OF THE STUDENTS IN THE OCTOBER CALENDAR PICTURE.. .JANE D'AGNESE
(A74) IS STRIDING UP TO THE QUAD AFTER LAB. LOOKING AT THE PICTURE, AND JUDGING FROM HER
ENTHUSIASM, l CAN STILL HEAR HER SAYING, "CHESTAH, CHESTAH, ARE YOU GOING TO THE PAHTY?"
(YouR CAPTION ABOUT SEMINAR AWAITING IS WELL-INTENTIONED, BUT I LIKE MY STORY BETTER.)
BEHIND HER IS POSSIBLY ME, THOUGH THE DRESS DOESN'T RING A BELL SO l WILL GLADLY CEDE TO
SOMEONE ELSE'S BETTER MEMORY AND IDENTIFICATION. SrrTING IN THE FOREGROUND IS, I'M
PRETTY SURE, PATRICK D'ADDARIO (A7x), OTHERWISE KNOWN ASP-DAD. -DEB Ross, A74
I do not think so. The Bavaria of
Einstein's youth was hardly a hotbed of
tolerance. Not only was the young Einstein
exposed to anti-Semitism; even ifhe and his
family were not "believing" Jews, he grew
up surrounded by believing Christians
receiving mandatory religious education
. .. .It is fair to suppose that this experience
as an intellectual as well as ethnic outsider
contributed to Einstein's ability to "think
outside the box," his ,villingness to explore
counter-intuitive models of the universe.
Second, the biographical sketch totally
omits the fact that Einstein was a committed
Zionist. Despite his principled disapproval
of ethnic nationalism, Einstein recognized
that Jews could not be fully accepted citizens
of European ethnic states, and needed their
own hom eland where they would not be
merely tolerated guests in an alien culture.
Well before Hitler came to power, Einstein
helped raise funds to buy land for Jewish
settlement and to support the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. After the war he
pleaded for the creation of a Jewish state,
and in his old age was offered (and declined)
the largely-ceremonial presidency of the
State oflsrael.
It is important to remember that even
such a universalist and hlLmanist as Albert
{ 1' H
E
Co
L LE
c
E .
St. John's College . Spring 2005
Einstein insisted on the importance of a
Jewish state for the preservation of the
Jewish people and their unique contribution
to human culture.
KEVIN SNAPP, SF72
CALENDAR MYSTERIES REVEALED
The May photo in the 2005 Philanthropia
calendar was taken in '72 or '73. That's me,
third from the left with the scraggly hair and
beard, with my leg up on the bench. Kit
(Kathleen) Callender (SF73) is to my left,
and Bill Blount (SF73) is seated to her left.
Beyond that, I'm guessing-it's embarrassing
not to remember everyone's names.
My sons will get a real kick out of seeing
their papa "back in the day."
PtTER MEADOW, SF73
The College welcomes letters on issues of
interest to readers. Letters may be 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 z8oo,
Annapolis, MD 21404, or by e-mail to
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu.
)
�IO
{ATHLETIC S }
{ATHLETICS}
''Bein.g out on the Severn River at dawn . ..
is about as close to heaven as you wtll ever get. "
BOATHOUSE
REPUBLIC
BY ROGER H. MARTIN
Roger Martin, president of Randolph-Macon College in the team. Everyone." Leo seems to be looking directly at me,
Ashland, Va., spent a semester at St. John :S lastfall. His goal perhaps because I stick out in this crowd of youngsters. I am not an
was to experiencefreshman year at the college, in part to gain ordinary freshman, but a college president on sabbatical.
I decide to go out for crew. Since I cannot live in a freshman
some insight that might be helpful in shaping the
residence haJJ, crew will provide the chance for me to have contact
freshman-year experience at his college. Martin sat in on
with students outside of the classroom and give me an opportunity
freshman seminar andjoined the crew team. In November, he
to explore the unique connection here between academics and
joined competitors 40 years younger at the annual Head of athletics.
the Occoquan Regatta. His experience broadened his views
On September 7, about 60 students turn up at six in the morning
about college sports.
for the first crew practice. I recognize some of chem: Julie, Justin,
reshman orientation ends at Iglehart Hall,
the college's ancient gymnasium. One hundred of us are greeted on this withering
August afternoon by athletic director
Leo Pickens (A78). We sit on the floor in a
wide semicircle as this man of modest build
and piercing eyes looks over us in silence. I
sense that we arc in the presence of a sage.
We are not seated in a gymnasium, but
rather in a sacred building- a temple, Leo explains. He talks about
how athletics was as much a part of Greek culture and society as
political discourse and debate and tells us chat athletics must therefore be taken seriously and with reverence.
After describing the intramural sports and activities at the
college, Leo says something you would not expect to hear from an
athletic director: "Skill and previous experience are not required
here at St. John's, just tlzumos. Passion." As he says "tlzumos," he
pounds his chest. He concludes: "Everyone who shows up will be on
{ T u E Co
LL Ec E .
Victoria-all members of my freshman seminar. No one is saying
anythi ng, and the eyes of many are glazed over, probably from latenight reading.
Leo, also the crew coach, wears blue thermal overalls, a red
sweatshirt that says "Johnnies" in white letters across the front, and
a well-worn baseball cap. I suspect he knows what is going through
our minds at this very moment. We are all wondering why any sane
person would get up at five in the morning to spend two hours
engaged in punishing physical exercise, often in foul weather. "I
can promise you," he says, "that being out on the Severn River at
dawn on a crisp fall morning, watching the sun rising from the east
and the geese flying to the south as eight oars move together in perfect unison over the glistening water is about as close to heaven as
you will ever get in this life."
We don't have Jong to wait. Next morning we all march down to
the dock. The sunrise over the Severn is spectacular. The novices,
including me, climb into an 18-person training barge. As we row up
and down College Creek the poetry of Homer's Odyssey, the book
we are now reading in seminar, provides a balm for the pain I begin
to feel in my lower back.
St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
THU/IfOS- PASSION- IS WHAT L EO P ICKENS DEMANDS FROM HIS ATHLETES.
{ THE
Co
LL E c E .
St. John's College. Spring 2005
)
�I2
{ATHLETICS}
{ATHLETICS}
The images and voices cfthe great books
are everywhere~ in the Boathouse as
we!f as on the Severn River.
ROCER MARTIN
When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more
we hauled the vessels down to the sunlit breakers first ....
The crews swung aboard, they sat to the oars in ranks
And in rhythm churned the water with stroke on stroke.
And churn the water we do in a boat vaguely similar to the
Pentekontor that brought Odysseus and his crew to the ends of the
world. I am in first position in the barge and directly in front of me
sits a limber 17-year-old freshman. Mike, the assistant coach, who
is standing in the stern at the tiller, yells out, "Everyone in the
catch position, oars square and buried." Not knowing what the
catch position is, I lean back as far as I can-which is not very
far-and my oar immediately fouls the oar of my rowing
companion who is leaning very far forward. The result is a loud
noise and a huge splash as we start rowing.
The novices practice in this way on College Creek until we
become proficient enough to row in a proper eight. Over the next
several weeks, my rowing improves and as it does, I blend in with
the young men in my boat. I am no longer a college president, I an1
just another novice learning how to row. I keep my mouth shut, I
observe, and I listen.
Most student-athletes leave their studies behind when they go
to practice. Not at St. John's. The images and voices of the great
books are everywhere, in the Boathouse as well as on the Severn
River. It is now 6:30 in the morning and it's pitch dark. We are
rowing up the river to
the start of our race, past
the Naval Academy
bridge, past the Route 50
bridge. A month from
now, we will race against
other colleges on the
Occoquan Reservoir in
Northern Virginia, and
our practice races have
taken on a new intensity.
The sky is studded with
stars, still bright enough
to be seen above the dark
purple hew of the Chesapeake's eastern sky, and
there isn't a cloud to be
seen. Bobbing sailboat
masts look like black
sticks in the distance,
{ TH E
and I can imagine the port of Argos, and Agamemnon and
Menelaus leaving for Troy with the Greek armada to win back
Helen. Our own armada of two eights, two fours, and a single quad
docs a river turn just beyond the Route 50 bridge and at Leo's
command we race back to the end of the Naval Academy seawall, a
distance of some 5,000 meters. A gray-blue storm cloud suddenly
appears and empties its moisture into our low-lying shells, requiring the coxes to bail madly as they call out their commands. At the
finish, in complete exhaustion, I notice the geese Leo Pickens
promised several weeks ago, eight of them (like the number rowing in our boat), flying directly overhead toward Virginia, honking
loudly as they wing their way south. The vision suggests to me that
we will do well at Occoquan.
October is upon us. My seminar is reading Plutarch's Lives of
lite Noble Grecians and Romans, and my boat continues to
improve. Today, us our four racing shells approach the Naval
Academy bridge, rowing at a rather hectic pace over the usual
5,000-meter course, we see an armada of yellow Naval Academy
shells, approaching us from downriver. Laughter comes from one
of them as it passes to our starboard. The midshipmen are getting
a kick out of seeing this rather motley collection of}ohnnics. And
who can blame them? There they are, in their clean white t-shirts
with "NAVY" emblazoned on the chest, and dark blue shorts, all
looking extremely fit and athletic. Here we are, some of us in
multi-colored t-shirts, some obviously overweight, others rather
skinny, some men wearing earrings, others
sporting tattoos, and
one very tired 61-ycarold guy with a red beard
rowing in the numbertwo position.
This scene causes me
to ponder Plutarch's
biographies of Lycurgus
and Solon. As the leader
of Sparta, Lycurgus is
architect of laws which
are austere and unyielding. In Athens, where
Co LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005
EVEN IN THE SHELLS ,
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT
THE BOOKS PERSIST.
}
Solon is the lawmaker,
individualism is honored.
Sitting in my shell and
watching our two very
different crews passing
each other on the Severn
River, I see how two
philosophies of society
exist side-by-side in Annapolis: St. John's, devoted to diversity and
pluralism, as Athens; the Naval Academy, with its focus on loyalty
to the corps, uniformity, and order, as Sparta.
Our training continues as November and the Head of the
Occoquan approach. I am amazed not only at how hard my teammates practice, but also how the great books arc ever part of
their chatter. Before launching our shells, I often hear students
talking about seminars, tutorials, or the Friday lecture. Even in
the boats, where crew is not supposed to talk, the great books
cannot be denied.
Our extremely capable cox is out of commission for a few weeks,
so a loquacious sophomore replaces her. While our regular cox is
all business and hardly ever talks except to give commands, her
substitute offers a running commentary on everything from
his favorite movies to college gossip to the current topics in
sophomore seminar. "Do you know what my tutor told us last
night at seminar?" he asks crew as we row out of College Creek
towards the Severn. His seminar is reading the Gospel of John.
"He said that because he first read the Bible in Greek he thought
that the first words of John were, 'The origin was the principle'
rather than, 'In the beginning was the Word.' "
As we round the seawall and head toward the Route 50 bridge,
now rov,ing at a fairly fast pace, his commentary regresses. He is
now talking about the Phoenicians. "Do you know why the
Phoenicians were the fastest rowers?" We are stumped. "Because
they had nubile Phoenician women to row home to." I find this
piece of information intriguing until, off to my port, I hear Leo
Pickens yelling at me from the skiff, "You're not focused Roger.
Snap those legs back. Square the oar. Drop the blade."
On November 6, the morning of the regatta. Leo assembles the
team in the back of the Boathouse. "Are you all ready for the
Festival of St. Occoquan?" he asks the assembled group. "OK,
now listen up. I have something important to say. First, I want to
commend all of you for the time and devotion you have given to
this sport. No matter how well you perform this afternoon, you
should all feel a great sense of accomplishment."
He continues by providing some interesting statistics. "Those
{ TH E
ON THE SEVERN AND IN
~ -........... SEMINAR, RocER MARTIN
( CENTER) SAW DEDICATION.
of you who are the grizzled veterans have put in
90 hours of practice, the
novices 80. And you've done this while being students in an
incredibly demanding academic program. Few athletes competing at Occoquan this afternoon have had to contend with the
incredible academic load all of you carry. You should feel extremely proud. You have achieved perfection. I pronounce this boathouse a republic."
In just six words, Leo says that we have come together as a team,
each doing his or her part, but each contributing to the good of
our community. Unity, one of the ideals of Plato's Republic, has
earned Leo's highest praise.We are not only rowing much better,
but we also care about each other. And there is a spirit-a team
spirit-that is very special. Clearly, we are far from perfect in our
rowing ability. But we really are, figuratively if not in reality, a
republic, and everyone understands exactly what our coach has
just said.
The race itself is a blur. My boat does reasonably well,
losing to the University of Maryland by only six seconds but
beating three other universities. However, before the day is out,
J witness C\vo contrasting scenes that speak to intercollegiate
athletics both in America and at my adopted college. As my wife
and I walk down the hill toward the launching docks just before
my race, I overhear a coach lecturing the women on a
large university team who are preparing to race. "You didn't get a
medal last year, girls. It was a real embarrassment to me personally and to the university. So are you going to screw up again this
year or win something?" I don't hear the rest of this speech as I
continue walking down the path, but I see discouragement in the
faces of the crew.
As I return to the parking area, I witness a more pleasing scene.
Seated on the ground and leaning on a boat trailer, one of our
team captains is reading an essay by Thomas Mann for preceptorial. Nothing, not even Occoquan, is more important than
Thomas Mann.
This is the way intercollegiate athletics ought to be. ♦
Co LL E c E. St. John's College . Spring 2005
}
�{THE
{TH E
TUTORS}
T U TOR S }
FAITH, FRIENDSHIP,
AND TEACHING
Brother Robert Smith u sail devoted to SL John:SBY ROBIN WEISS (SFG186)
rother Robert Smith (HA90) traces
his personal history-spanning
90 years-from his childhood near
the Golden Gate Bridge, through
adolescence in wine country, to
adulthood when, as a Christian
Brother, be stoked the fires of his
passion for educational reform: first
at St. Mary's College in Moraga,
Calif., then at St. John's in Annapolis.
"I just learned from a woman we both knew that Jacob
Klein told her that once I came here I would never leave.
This has turned out to be true," he says, reflecting on his
appointment to St. John's in 1972.
For Brother Robert, the Program is perpetually new.
"Each person is asking their own questions; that is the
heart of education," he contends. "There's a new conversation every time. You see the repeated miracle, each year, of
how students develop, with a renewal of life each time."
To generations of Johnnies, Brother Robert has served
"as practical advisor, career counselor, spiritual guide,
almost Any mentor-like role," says tutor emeritus Elliott
Zuckerman (HA95) . No one has been so unswervingly
devoted to the college, to the seminar in particular, and,
personally, to [former Annapolis dean] Jacob Klein."
During his graduate school years in D.C., tutor Michael
Dink (A75) enjoyed Brother Robert's standing offer of a
guest room in his Market Street apartment. "At breakfast,"
Dink recalls, " I did my best to keep up my end of the conversation, regardless of what kind of night I had.. ..These
talks helped me to keep a sane perspective on the sometimes trying world of graduate school."
{ THE
Devotion to faith, friendship, and the practice of teaching underlie Brother Rober t's story, which began in a "very
interesting part of Oakland," home to a flood of German
refugees fleeing the persecution of Catholics under Otto
von Bismarck, chancellor of the German Empire.
"At the beginning of the Prussian takeover, Bismarck
made life very difficult in Germany. A lot of these people,
specifically Franciscans, were aware of California because
that order had missions there." Brother Robert explains
how these "highly educated people started a parish in what
was then the edge of Oakland. Now it's deep in Oakland but
the parish is still there."
He remembers orchards near his grammar school, where
German nuns taught using methods "in advance of
Catholic schools anywhere."
"I benefited from that. I grew up in that parish and that
sch ool, and I'm very grateful. It was far-seeing, a wider outlook," he says. At a Christian Brothers high school in
Berkeley, he met the brothers and liked them. "I wanted to
do what they were doing-so I joined them."
In the fall of 1930, while a novice, he picked grapes
and was p art of the group who moved the Christian
Brothers Winery to their 400 acres in Napa Valley. During
Prohibition, because it was legal to sell alcohol for religious
pur poses, the ,v:inerywas allowed to stay open.
"As recently as 15 years ago, over half the brandy in this
country was our brandy," he recalls. Today, with their winery closed, the Brothers keep a small hospital on this land
high in the hills above Napa, but rent the remaining acres to
Stone Winery.
Founded in France in 1680, the Christian Brothers (an
order of teachers who are not priests) spoke to the needs
Co LL EGE. St. John's College. Spring 2005
)
FOR 33 YEARS, BROTHER ROBERT HAS REMAINED
"UNSWERVINGLY DEVOTED" TO ST. J OH N'S.
{ TH E
Co LL E GI!. St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
�I6
I7
{THE TUTORS}
{THE T UTORS}
"THE BROTHER"
BROTHER ROBERT SMITH, SAY
of the working poor as these
HIS FORMER STUDENTS, "MADE
people made the transition
HIMSELF THE BEST OF FRIENDS."
from rural to city life.
According to Brother
we were at war and various
Robert, the founder saw "a
people said: 'You'll eventucrying need to provide free
ally get into this war, and it
education," which allowed
won't be a good thing for
for "the very beginning of
you.' " Instead, in 1943 he
the possibility oflower-class
went to Laval University, in
people rising." In this time
Quebec, where he studied
of Louis the XIV, with finanphilosophy.
cial support from nobility,
He doesn't regret that choice. " It
the Brothers initiated radically new
turns out they were right." He
schools, which were French rather
remembers studying with people
than Latin-based. These schools
who had started at Louvain and
were for shoemakers, shipbuilders,
had to leave. " Laval was extremely
and other working people who deslively. There were refugees from
perately needed the basics of math,
BROTHER ROBERT SMITH , TUTOR
other European countries," creatreading, and writing to survive in
ing an exciting mix of teachers and
the cities. The movement started in
students.
Rheims and quickly spread to Paris,
After returning to St. Mary's as a teacher, Brother Robert
Avignon, and Rome.
continued work on his dissertation: liberal arts from the
Almost two centuries later, when Pope Pius IX asked
point of view of St. Thomas Aquinas, completed and pubBrothers from France to serve in California, they were
lished in 1947. A grant allowed him to spend the following
reluctant to go. " In effect, the Pope gave a polite order to
summer at Edinburgh University. "I studied, amongst
get us there, and we've been there ever since," Brother
other things, Hume," he admits, laughing. " He's not my
Robert says. "We had to do things we didn't do in France,"
favorite philosopher, but he came from that university. So I
such as teaching Latin and Greek to a more affluent populahad a good taste of him there."
tion, that oflawyers, doctors, and priests. "We had to scrape
In 1953, after a year in Rome, he was back at St. Mary's
around and find teachers who were competent," he says.
teaching large lecture classes. "We already had seminars,
Thus arose St. Mary's College in 1863, which the
but these lecture classes were the usual ones. At St. Mary's,
Brothers took over in 1869 and run to this day. After attendwe always had our eye on new needs and new ways of doing
ing St. Mary's as an undergraduate, Brother Robert taught
things, and that connects ,vith St. John's."
in a Sacramento high school for a number of years, a
Innovation at St. Mary's had much to do with a layman
requirement of his order.
teaching there, James L. Haggerty, who was acquainted
He recounts that, when he joined the order, there
with the original committee who went to the University
were ten thousand French Brothers as opposed to three
of Chicago in pursuit of "the ideal form of education."
thousand non-French. He'd grown to love French and, for
Brother Robert tells how the partial successes at Chicago,
graduate work, wanted to attend Louvain, in Belgium, "but
"You see the repeated miracle.,
each yea0 cfhow
students develop. . "
{ THE
Co LL E c
E .
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
Annapolis tutor Howard Zeiderman worked with Brother
Robert in many environments. "The most memorable
ti me I spent with Robert was when he accompanied me to
participate in a Touchstones program we had in prison.
He and I and six others joined 12 inmates for a go-minute
seminar. That day the men had selected a text in Touchstones, a selection by St. Theresa of Avila, on prayer."
Brother Robert didn't wear his collar and was quicl for
the beginning part of the conversation. But after about
five minuLes, Zciderman recalls, Brother Robert began
to talk about forgiveness. "The men were transfixed.
None moved when the warning bells sounded, and Lhe
guards finally came LO move them along to their lunch,"
Zeiderman says. "As we left, they referred to him as
brother-a title of friendship. However as the months
passed, each time I came into prison, they asked about
Robert and referred to him as Brother Smith. Finally they
simply began to ask after 'the Brother,' a phrase no one
had ever heard them use before. Ile simply, even when
looking like the resl of us, became BroLher Robert." ♦
such as changing the undergraduate
structure
but
preserving departments, didn't satisfy Scott Buchanan and
others working with him. So,
at St. John's in Annapolis,
"We started anew here, eradicating traditional departments
and transforming the lecture
system to education through
conversation.
At St. Mary's, Haggerty
introduced changes, as far as
he could, such as reading original sources and implementing the seminar. " He talked to all of us about the wonderful
thing that was going on at St. John's. We sent people to
St. John's to look at it," Brother Robert remembers. "We
became closer to St. John's."
In the fall ofx956, St. Mary's received a grant to explore
possibilities for educational reform. Haggerty, initially
responsible, became ill. "Somebody had to run it, so I was
put in charge all the sudden," says Brother Robert. "All I
knew was St. John's. By that time, I had visited a number
of times."
Visits were sweeter due to Raymond Wilburn, a former
St. John's dean, who befriended Brother Robert while
Wilburn was stationed at a naval pre-flight school, located
on the campus at St. Mary's during the war. Wilburn wrote
letters for Brother Robert "to be nicely treated" during
his visits.
He recalls one trip in particular, when he attended a
seminar taught by Jacob Klein. " I was overwhelmed by it,
so I made a point of getting to know him. We became
friends and we remained friends until he died."
While in charge of the new project at St. Mary's, Brother
Robert called on Klein, Richard Scofield, and others for
help. He describes "bold projects," such as bringing in people from outside St. Mary's to examine each senior on his
essay. " I would not do that again. I was matching important
{T
H E
Co L
L E
people, sometimes, with very
ordinary students. I thought
every student should have the
same chance."
He spent his sabbatical
year of 1964 in Venice studying Rabelais. "Rabelais
despised the system under
which he was educated and
decided to get free of it. I've
read him, cover to cover,
many times." After Brother
Robert returned to the states,
Klein invited him to give a lecture.
" I enjoyed it," he says. "I think the students did, too. I
was more rambunctious than I would be now." He admits to
quoting Rabelais "in all kinds of unseemly ways that I
wouldn't do now... "
But after lecture, " Klein told me I would probably be
invited to teach here."
And he was. Students of his first class, a junior seminar in
1966-67, made him an honorary member. He corresponds
with some of them to this day.
" By committing himself as a teacher to thinking together
with his students about what matters to them, Brother
Robert has made himself the best of friends," says Steve
Werlin (A85). " It has also led him to surprising places. He
can speak well of Aristotle, Montaigne, and Baudelaire, but
also about the Talking Heads." Now a teacher himself,
Werlin relies on Brother Robert's advice: "Start where the
students are."
For the remainder of the 1960s, Brother Robert returned
to his duties at St. Mary's. " I had to put the new project in
good enough shape" before getting permission to transfer.
But when the time was ripe for Klein's prediction to come
true, Brother Robert telephoned Klein, asking, " Does
it make any difference to St. John's if I come this year
or next?"
" It makes a difference to me," Klein replied. ♦
c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005
}
�I8
{ON
{ON NIETZSCHE}
Ig
N I ETZSCHE}
"Ourfavorite author.s are .simply
those we cannot escape. "
JOHN VERDI, TUTOR
NIETZSCHE 'S
FAVORITE WRIT ERS
BY JOHN VERDI
t is probably true that all of us
ought to read more books by
those authors with whom we
deeply disagree , because only
they have the power to force us
to rethink our comfortable
ideas. Most of us, however, do not do so,
but instead gravitate to those authors in
whose books we recognize our own
thoughts expressed more fully and convincingly, or so we would like to think. In
any event Nietzsche cautions us against
reading any author "of whom it is apparent that he wanted to produce a book,"
but urges us to read " only those whose
thoughts unintentionally became a
book." (The Wanderer and His Shadow ,
I2I) Perhaps we should trust no idea at all
{T n
E
that comes to us while we are reading; as
Nietzsche says, "only ideas won by walking have anyvalue." (Twilight ofthe Idols,
I, 34)
Still, Nietzsche himself read widely,
and while we may not always find his interpretations of his predecessors accurate or
fair, he certainly did h ave his favorite
writers, those in whom he heard echoes of
his own insights and struggles, or who
represented to him types of their age, distillations of the thought around them, or
who entered the great conversation with a
destructive impulse, in an attempt to
refashion thought after their own image.
Our favorite authors are simply those we
cannot escape, because they are too close
to us, for better or worse. Our favorites
Co LL E c E. St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
READING NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITES GIVES US MORE INSIGHT INTO A
PUZZLING AUTHOR, SAYS TUTOR JOHN VERDI.
{T
tt
s Co LL s c £.St.John's College. Spring 2005
}
�{O N NIE T ZSC H E }
{ON N I ETZSCHE}
2.0
reveal aspects of ourselves that might otherwise remain
undetected, and so it can be valuable to reflect on them. For
a similar reason we might better understand what Nietzsche
means to us-what Nietzsche ought to mean to us-by asking
who the writers were that he could not leave behind. Nietzsche's pantheon of favorites is large, and I have chosen only
a few and not necessarily those who exerted the most
influence on him. In making this selection I am, to be sure,
revealing a favoritism of my own.
HERACLITUS
In the fragments of Heraclitus Nietzsche found a man who
was willing to live without the metaphysical comfort given
by belief in things that persistently endure. 0wqmjJuLorraorcavra peL, ouoev µevu: Everything changes, nothing
remains steadfast. Nietzsche says that around Heraclitus he
culture that after Socrates, Plato, and Jesus, becomes "pale
and ungraspable," even "immoral." (Daybreak, 103)
Nietzsche's praise ofThucydidcs makes me wonder if, in the
famous dialogue between the Melians and the Athenians
over the fate ofMclos, the historian even means for us to ask
whether it is the one or the other who are right. Might the
moral question be exactly the one Thucydides wants not to
raise? As if to suggest this, Nietzsche asks a rhetorical
question: " Does one reproach Thucydides for the words
he put into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors when
they negotiated with the Melians on the question of destruction or submission?" (Will to Power, 42.9) The Athenians
argue from power, yet don't we find their words compelling,
if not decisive?
P LATO
felt "altogether warm and better than anywhere else. The
Nietzsche could never escape Plato. His relationship with
affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is the
decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; saying "Yes" to
opposition and war; becoming, along with a radical repudiation of the very concept of being-all this is clearly more
closely related to me than anything else to date." (Ecce
Homo, IV, 3) Throughout his life Nietzsche considered himself a disciple of Heraclitus. While St. John's does not try to
inculcate this reverence in its freshmen, we do ask them to
translate many of his fragments in the language tutorial.
Their depth and power, contained in such brief, aphoristic compass, invariably proves a remarkable springboard for
reflection on the depth and power of all language.
him and with Socrates often reads like a rocky love affair. On
the one hand he praises, saying: " One can conceive philosophers as those who make the most extreme efforts to test
how far man could elevate himself-Plato especially" ( Will to
Power, 973) and "What is needed above all is an absolute
skepticism toward all inherited concepts (of the kind that
one philosopher perhaps possessed-Plato, of course-for
he taught the reverse)." ( Will to Power, 409) On the other
hand he considers what has derived from Plato to be a sickness. "My cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides, and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli,
are related to me closely by their unconditional will not to
deceive themselves and not to see reason in reality."
(Twilight of the Idols, V, 2.) Nietzsche praises Plato as "the
most beautiful growth of antiquity," but one who invented
"the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors
so far... the pure spirit and the good as such." (Beyond Good
and Evil, 2) Nietzsche also complains that "since Plato
philosophy has been dominated by morality." {Will to
Power, 412.) Philosophy has lost the ability to blur the
boundary between good and evil, in the way that Nietzsche
believes Thucydides could do naturally, to the extent even
of denying that morality has any role to play in our understanding of human actions. Plato and Socrates represent for
Nietzsche the triumph ofreason and dialectic over intuition
and instinct. Nietzsche, however, struggles to make clear
that "one does not make men better when one represents to
them that virtue is demonstrable and asks for reasons."
T HUCYD IDES
T hucydides is another program author Nietzsche considered a favorite, because Thucydides "takes the most
comprehensive and impartial delight in all that is typical in
men and events and believes that to each type there pertains
a quantum of good sense: this he seeks to discover." (Daybreak, 168) While this reason for his love of Thucydides
might seem at odds with his praise for individuality and
transcendence, and his beckoning to the " Overman,"
themes that pervade his later work, still Nietzsche often
wonders "what might yet be made of man" as a species
(Beyond Good and Evil, n8), andhow"the type 'man'" can
be enhanced. (Beyond Good and Evil, 2.57) He believes that
in Thucydides we see the "last glorious flower" of " that
culture of the most impartial knowledge of the world," a
{ TH E
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)
(Will to Power, 441), which
is what he thinks Plato and
Socrates do. If our favorite
writers ought to be the ones
that do us the most good,
then perhaps we ought
to include Plato in our list
of Nietzsche's favorites,
though Plato did not give
him the sort of comfort we
often seek in our favorite
authors. But Nietzsche
rarely sought comfort.
2.I
NIETZSCHE RARELY SOUGHT
COMFORT IN THE WORKS HE READ.
Nietzsche thought that
honesty was the one virtue
left to "free spirits," among
whom he counted himself.
"So few writers are honest
that one ought really to
mistrust
anyone
who
writes." (Schopenhauer as
Educator, 2,) In Montaigne,
however, he found the most ~
honest of writers. Mon- 8
taigne's willingness to
explore his own character and the prejudices with which he
himself reads and writes is what impresses and stimulates
Nietzsche most. "Since getting to know this freest and
mightiest of souls, I at least have come to feel what he felt
about Plutarch: 'as soon as I glance at him I grow a leg or a
wing.' " (Ibid.) Montaigne's honesty also infuses what Nietzsche considers his other admirable quality: "a cheerfulness
that really cheers ...with certainty and simplicity, courage
and strength ... as a victor...for there is cheerfulness only
when there is victory." (Ibid.) Montaigne hides nothing and
because he is deeply interested in the world as it is and as it
has been reflected in great books, he serves for Nietzsche as
a kind of Thucydides of the soul.
them both, and for this Nietzsche loves him. " He has
taught me such an infinite
amount-the only logical
Christian." (Letter to Georg
Brandes) At the age of 16
Pascal wrnte a treatise on
conic sections, a text that
marks the beginning of his
very fruitful work in science
and mathematics, and which
students at St. John's read as
sophomores. T hen at the
age of 31 he experienced a
conversion and devoted the
rest of his short life to
religious matters and to
introspection . Nietzsche
consider s him "the most
instructive victim of Christianity." (Ecce Homo, II, 3)
According to Nietzsche,
Pascal carries Christianity to its logical conclusion, "selfcontempt and self-abuse" ( Will to Power, #2,52,), a condition
in which "everything is sin, even our virtues." ( Will to
Power, #786) In such a condition reason, too, is corrupt and
faith is needed for every kind of kno,ving. Furthermore, in
his writing Pascal seems to share some of the honesty that
for Nietzsche characterizes Montaigne. "One should not
conceal ...how our thoughts have come to us. The profoundest and least exhausted books will probably always
have something of the aphoristic and unexpected character
of Pascal's Pensees." (Will to Power, #42.4) Both writers tell
us not only what they think, but how they came to think so,
which can be enormously supportive for those of us who
struggle simply to try to think a few good thoughts.
PASCAL
H EIN RI CH H EINE
Nietzsche sees personified in Pascal the conflict between
science and faith. While Nietzsche attacks both, Pascal.felt
Heinrich H eine was a German poet, cnuc, and writer
of Jewish heritage who converted to Protestanti sm for
MONTAIGNE
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�{O N NIET ZS CHE}
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BEYOND THE BOOKS
practical reasons. Nietzsche admired his work immensely
throughout his life, and wrote of him: " T he highest conception of the lyric poet was given me by Heinrich Heine . ... He
possesses that divine malice without which I cannot imagine
perfection ....And how he employs German! It will one day
be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of
the German language." (Ecce Homo, III, 4) In Heine can
perhaps be found the seeds of two of Nietzsche's most
famous pronouncements, the death of God and the eternal
return of the same. In The History ofReligion and Philosophy in Germany, H eine writes: "Do you hear the little bell
ring? Kneel down. They are bringing the sacraments to a
dying god." (Book II) And in his Last Poems and Thoughts,
we find this: " However long a time may pass, according to
the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal
play of repetition, all meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and
corrupt each other again." (We also find the eternal return
suggested by another poet Nietzsche admired, Friedrich
Holderlin, in his unfinished play, The Death ofEmpedocles.
Empedocles speaks: "Go, and fear nothing. Everything
recurs./ And what's to come already is complete.")
R ALPH WALD O E MERSON
Perhaps the writer Nietzsche held dearest from early in life
to late, and the one he returned to again and again, is an
American, Ralph Waldo Emerson . Nietzsche read Emerson
(in German translation) while a student at Schulpforta, and
after he lost his much-annotated copy of Emerson's Essays
some years later, he soon replaced it. While in the end the
differences between the two men may be greater than their
similarities, there is no question that Nietzsche found much
to admire in Emerson's views of nature and history, of
the role of genius in human culture, and of the paradoxical
character of good and evil. The first edition of The Gay
Science quotes Emerson's essay " History" in an epigraph.
"To the poet and sage, all things are friendly and hallowed,
all experiences profitable, all days holy, all men divine."
What Nietzsche finds in Emerson is a thinker who, like
Heraclitus, sees the natural world as shot through with
impermanence. "There are no fixtures in nature. The
universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of
degrees." (Circles) He finds a man who recognizes that
"man .. .is that middle point, whereof every thing may be
affirmed and denied with equal reason." (Spiritual Laws)
H e finds a writer who acknowledges that "we do not see
{ TH E
directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of
correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are,
or of computing the amount of their errors." (Experience)
Nietzsche also discovered in Emerson someone who was
willing to say: " I would gladly be moral ... but I have set
my heart on honesty." (Experience) In general Emerson's
skeptical attitude toward custom and conventionality is
thoroughly Nietzschean. Of both thinkers one might say (as
Nietzsche does say of Schopenhauer by citing Emerson):
" Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this
planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is
safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science but
its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not any literary
reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that
may not be revised and condemned." (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator; Emerson, Circles)
A N EC L ECTI C LI ST
While I promised only to give my favorites of Nietzsche's
favorites, I ought also to mention some of the other writers
Nietzsche admired, though his attitude toward most was
ambivalent. The list is eclectic. There are the great aphorists: La Rochefoucauld, Lichtenberg, Chamfort, Leopardi.
There are the German giants: Kant, Goethe, Hegel,
Schopenhauer. There is Spinoza, the "purest sage," who
because he denied free will, teleology, and the moral world
order, also stands "beyond good and evil." There are the
Eastern influences, especially Buddhism, which Nietzsche
came to know largely through his reading of Schopenhauer,
and Zoroastrianism, founded by the Persian, Zoroaster, or
Zarathustra. (Could Emerson's description of Zarathustra in
Character have influenced Nietzsche's development of his
version of the character?) And then there is Dostoevsky.
Nietzsche considered his discovery of Dostoevsky in 1887 to
have been "one of the most beautiful strokes of fortune
in [his] life." (Twilight of the Idols, IX, 45) I wonder what
twentieth-century writers Nietzsche would have esteemed,
but then I realize that hardly one has not been affected by
him to some degree. Would not the literature of the last
century be to Nietzsche a mirror in which the reflected
image, while perhaps distorted, would nonetheless be a
familiar one? ♦
John Verdi is a tutor in Annapolis.
Co LL E c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
Revisiting Nietzsche in Sils-Maria
BY JENNIFER A. DONNELLY,
A96
- - - • he rituals of opening questions,
seminar and don
rags vanish after
graduation from
St. John's. But the
night the bells of
McDowell Hall
tolled my class's
submission of our senior essays, an
aphorism by Nietzsche, on whom I had
written my essay, seemed co ring out like
an opening question to the rest of our
lives. " What good is a book," he asks in
The Gay Science, "that does not even
carry us beyond all books?"
As is often the case with Nietzsche,
the formulation is enigmatic: we know
that the man who articulated it was an
avid reader, a prolific writer and a professional philologist, and we notice that the
format used to question the value of
books is, well, a book. But for us,
students of the "great books" program,
the teasing becomes almost a taunt.
What good are these books to which we devote ourselves for four
years? And what does it mean to be carried beyond them?
After seven years of being nagged by these questions, I made
a journey to what could be considered their source: the Nietzsche
Haus in Sils-Maria, the remote village in southeastern Switzerland's Engadine valley where the philosopher spent several
summers and produced some of his most notorious works.
Despite having poured my heart into my senior essay on Beyond
Good and Evil, I had not pursued further studies on Nietzsche or
in philosophy. On that first visit, however, I lovingly toted my
careworn copy of that book, its marginalia ranging from smiley
faces to question marks to "Yes!"
The house in which Nietzsche used to board now shelters a
small museum, library, and archive that present elements of his
life and ideas, as well as some aspects of the remarkably rich
literary and artistic history of the region (which drew authors
{T
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THE VIEW FROM JENNIFER DONNELLY'S ROOM IN THE NIETZSCHE HAUS,
WHERE THE PHILOSOPHER STAYED REGULARLY IN THE I88os.
from Rainer Maria Rilke and Hermann Hesse to Anne Frank
and Pablo Neruda). When co-curator Mirella Carbone mentioned
that a few rooms are allocated to artists, scholars, and writers, I
wondered whether the Engacline's reputed "champagne air" had
gone to my head. The prospect of unbroken space and time for
reflection stretched out wide and inviting like the glacier-topped
pea.ks, temperamental skies, and glassy lakes that inspired
Nietzsche's idea of"eternal return."
So return I did. One year later, the toy-like RhiitischeBahn train
was carrying me up an unending succession of misty switchbacks,
steep terrain that Nietzsche somehow covered in a horse-drawn
carriage. This stay in Sils-Maria was to last a month. Although I
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
�{ALUMNI VOICE S }
{A LUMNI VOICES}
was eager to reread Nietzsche
in the environment that had
so powerfully inspired him, it
wasn't my intention to make
a pilgrimage to his ghost.
Rather, having recently completed a master's thesis on art
museums in Paris, which for
five years had been home, I
was mainly seeking distance
from everyday life in order to
WTite and think about something else, such as where my
next steps might lead.
My room in the Nietzsche
Haus turned out to share one
wall with that of its more
famous resident. It also bore
the type of Spartan furnishings upon which he had
insisted-little more tha n a
single bed and a WTiting
desk-although I had the
benefit of electric lamps and
a sink instead of gas lanterns
and a washstand. I soon
determined that my ends
were best achieved not by sitting at that desk, but by setting out into
the mountains framed by the window
above it. As I climbed the trails, one
panorama wouJd unfold into the next
and high-altitude valleys would come
into view; peaks previously hidden
would rise up, compelling me to continue moving, often over snow fields
and glacier streams, in hopes of glimpsing whatever Jay beyond.
Just so, fresh perspectives on my life
down in the "flatlands" (to borrow
Thomas Mann's phrase from The Magic
Mountain , set in nearby Davos) suggested themselves. The insights sometimes evaporated, but other times they
REVISTING N I ETZSCHE SENT
DONNELLY BACK TO P ARIS WITH
NEW APPRECIATION FOR THE
PROGRAM IN GENERAL.
l
evolved into realizations about
how I had wound up where I
was and resolutions about how
to proceed forward. The sound
of the German verb for "to
hike," wandern, aptly captured this dual motion of
rambling across slopes and
" .. the texu on the Program
create a sort ofmental
landscape through which
we Johnnies-and all those
who reai debat~ and write
aboutthegreatbookshave earned thepassport
to wander. "
J ENNIFER A. DONNELLY, A96
{THE
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meandering through thoughts.
Furthermore, so resounding
is the echo between Nietzsche's writings and the Engadine landscape that the hiking
paths-wanderwege-turned
out to give as direct an access
to his ideas as did the wellstocked shelves of the Nietzsche Haus library and the
Biblioteca Engiadinaisa. Trail
guidebooks quote the philosopher on the scenery (he
described a lake as " milkgreen ") and designate his favorite trails
(rarely too steep, because of his fragile
health). At the tip of the Chaste peninsula jutting into the serene lake of Sils,
where he dreamed of living in "a sort of
ideal dog-kennel," a boulder is engraved
with a passage from Zaratlwstra: "AJl joy
longs for eternity...."
On one hike, the words fit the scenery
with an exactitude that was downright
eerie. Takjng a break, listening to cowbells ringing through the valley, I
opened On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life. "Consider
the herd before you," the book begins,
t
I
launching a discourse on the dangers of historical memory by
describing a herd of grazing cattle.
Off the trails, the magnetic gcist of the Nietzsche Haus and
its centrality in the Engadinc's cultural and intellectual life
encouraged the conversations that, as all Johnnies know, round
out reading and reflection. I met a Scottish professor from
the University of
Hawaii writing the
preface to his translation of Zarathustra, a
Ziirich screenwriter,
and a Swiss-German
novelist. Even the
library seemed to hum
with the whispers of
the absent authors of
weighty dissertations
sent from all corners
of the globe like travelogues from the territory of Nietzsche's
thought.
The image of those
heavily footnoted theses loomed in my
mind when co-curator
Joachim Jung asked me to explain my link to the house's
namesake. As I rendered into clumsy German a 20-year-old's
interpretation of Nietzsche's "philosophy of the future," I wondered whether my unmediated reading of that book was merely a
straying into a thick forest, and my senior essay for St. John's a
valiant but inexpert attempt to plot my haphazard steps back
through it.
I reread that essay, after descending to the flatlands of Paris, for
the first time since handing it in that cold January night in
Annapolis. Since my focus had been morality, religion, and dogmatism, the ending surprised me: "Art," I had concluded, "is
beyond good and evil. ..." Though I would no longer dare to
defend this proclamation as earnestly as I might have at my senior
oral, I like to consider it a portend to my later experiences of
studying and working in the field of the visual arts.
This perspective on my study of Nietzsche at St John's leads me
back to my opening question: what is the value of studying the
program books? Writing a senior essay on Nietzsche certainly did
{ THE
not make me an authority on his philosophy. But reading his work
in the Engadine years later reminded me that the texts on
the program create a sort of mental landscape through
which we Johnnies-and all those who read, debate, and write
about the great books- have earned the passport to wander. The
books (as well as the musical scores, the scientific papers,
and the mathematical
texts) can inform our
decisions, spark new
ideas, and color our
experiences long after
our formal studies
end. And we need not
become experts on
a book or its author
in order to be instructcd, entertained or
even annoyed, any
more than we need be
Alpinists to hike up a
mountain.
As for defining my
next steps, walking
through Nietzsche's
mountains convinced
THE MOUNTAINS T HAT I NSPIR ED NI ETZSCH E
me that reorienting
GAVE DONNELLY N EW INSIGHTS INTO THE
oneself
is a process
PHILOSOPHER'S IDEAS.
that never ends. "Der
Weg ist das Ziel, " ran
an ad in a paper I read over morning coffee at the Nietzsche Haus:
the path is the goal. The real challenge is not to stick to a narrow
trail but to keep climbing with all the strength in our limbs and
hearts in search of the most breathtakjng views. ♦
Notes: Nietzsche's description ofthe lake as "milk-green" isfound
in Eugen E. Hiisler's Engadin, Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 2001.
His favorite trails are described in Paul Raabe 's Spaziergange
<lurch Nietzsches Sils-Maria, Arche Verlag AC, Zurich-Hamburg,
1994. Nietzsche's description of his retreat as a "sort ofideal dogkennel" is mentioned in a letter to Carl von Gersdorff, 28 June
1883, cited in The Nietzsche Haus in Sils-Maria, by Peter Andre
Bloch, Calanda Verlag, Eng. trans. Albi &Julia Rosenthal.
Co LL E c E. John's College. Spring 2005 l
�26
{C R OQ UE T}
{CROQUET}
NAVY PREVAILS!
Cold and Rain Fatl to Dampen Spirits
at the 23rdAnnual Croquet Match
BY ROSEMARY HARTY
eforc the match started, the
only thing to grumble about
was the weather: unseasonably
cold, windy, patches of rainthe kind of weather that calls
for abandoning the picture hat
and sun dress in favor of a down coat and
jeans. Nevertheless, the crowd of alumni,
students, and townies approached 500. They
enjoyed the party under umbrellas, tents,
and blankets.
But then, the unthinkable! With the score
tied 2-z, a Navy team edged past Chris Mules
(Ao6) and Tristan Evans-Wilcnt (Ao7) after
the Johnnies tried a risk)' move and ended
up "staked out" by their opponents.
In hockey, it was the equivalent of sitting
in a penalty box while the winning team
scores on a power play. Jn basketball, it was
like watching a three-pointer swish through
the net with your best player on the bench
after fouling out.
It was a well-played, competitive, exciting
croquet match-just what the two teams who
took the field were hoping for. The Mids
emerged from Woodward Hall to Queen's
"Under Pressure." The theme from
The A-Team played as the Johnnies came
out dressed like characters from the movie
Napoleon Dynamite, in badly stenciled
white t-shirts that said "Vote for Pedro,"
short-shorts, and geeky headbands.
The two teams were tied for most of the
afternoon, with St. John's clinching one of
the final games when senior Cara Lammey
hit a winning stroke.
"I knew it was now or never ifl was going
to play a match-I also know they needed a
token girl," she explained.
Imperial Wicket Nick Whittier (Ao5)
had nothing but praise for the Navy team.
Having beaten Navy in an intercollegiate
competition a few short weeks before,
Whittier wasn't expecting
an upset.
" Some of their best players had an ei,.traordinary
game, and some of ours had
one or two off shots-and
that's all it takes," he says.
"I think the Navy team is
excellent."
Overall, St John's has won
r8 matches co Navy's five
wins. The last time Navy
upset the Johnnies was in
zoor. Navy's captain, Adam
Todd, declared himself
"stoked" over the win.
{ T H E
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St. John's College . Spring 2005
MIDSHIPMEN ADAM TODD (LEFT) AND
ALEX PLUMER GREET NICK WHITTIER (Ao5,
RIGHT) AND JOHN GERARD (Aos) FOR A
FIERCE BATTLE.
"It was a great match," he said. "The
Johnnies came out and played an excelJent
game."
The Navy team of Dustin Wood (next
year's captain) and Eric Watt succeeded in
"staking out" the Johnnies by hitting a rover
ball, a move the Johnnies had just tried
unsuccessfully. That forced the Johnnies to
sit out two rounds, allowing Navy the win.
Navy fans rushed the field in triumph.
Did the Navy team put in extra practice
this year? "We practiced less because of the
bad weather," he said.
A few days after the match, Todd was
unable to say where the Mids planned to
display the Annapolis Cup, the thrift-store
trophy awarded the winners of the match.
" I didn't even know there was a 'cup,'"
he said. "I had always thought it was just
a myth." ♦
}
SANTA FE CHILI
SAVES THE DAY
Alumni traveled from as far away as
California to attend the an nual Croquet
match against the Naval Academy, and
their spirits were only slightly wilted by
gloomy weather and ignominious defeat.
The weather didn't stop a group of Santa
Fe alumni from pulling off a pre-Homecoming reunion, or deter a grou p of young
Annapolis alumni from pitching a te nt
and enjoying a banquet of potato-leek
soup, vichyssoise, and salmon.
Tanya Hadlock-Piltz (Ao5) flew in from
Los Angeles to see her friends- all of
whom were dressed to the nines. "This is
homecoming for us," said Hadlock-Piltz.
The Santa Fe reunion class of zooo
used the annual party to stage a preHomecoming gathering in Annapolis.
Many alumni live on the Ease Coast, so
croquet gave them an impetus to get
together in case they can't make it back
to Santa Fe this summer. T he group
consisted ofr4 alumni from the class. and
even though their plans were somewhat
compromised by uncooperative weather,
they had a great time catching up, said
Alex.is Brown (SFoo, EC03).
The group rented lodgings in the
historic district and had Horseman's
Haven green chili, "a much-loved and
missed commodity from Santa Fe,"
shipped to the Annapolis alumni office
before the event. Their plan was to invite
any Santa Fe alumni and current students
(a group of about 20 made the trip) whom
they met during the croquet match to a
Saturday-evening barbeque. When the
match was postponed to Sunday because
of threatening weather, they partied
amongst themselves, ate more salsa, and
joined the Waltz party later that night.
All alumni got to sample the hoc stuff on
Sunday at the alumni tent.
"Evcr)one was very happy to have had
this opportunity to get back together,"
says Brown. "Some ofus hadn't seen each
other in six years.''
Amina Khattak (SFGI95) flew in from
Norther 1 California, bringing Annika, 3,
and CyT,1s, r4 months, to introduce them
to John me croquet. "I try to come out
every year, but this is their first match,"
she said. ♦
CLOCICWISE: ANNAPOLIS '04 GRADS IN THEIR
FINERY; MEGHAN HUGHES
(SFoo)
AND HER
BEAU, PATRICK; LAURENT MERCERON
(Ao8);
(Ao7).
AND JUDITH TORGERSON, MOM OF ERIC
PHOTOS BY MATTHEW BARRICK
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�28
OPEN SECRETS/I NWARD P ROSPECTS:
REFLECTIONS ON WORLD AND SOUL
By Eva Brann
Paul Dry Books, 2.004
n her latest book, Annapolis tutor
Eva Brann has collected
observations and aphorisms
written over more than
30 years. Open Secrets/
Inward Prospects divides
into two sorts: observations about
our external world well known to
all but not always openly told, and
sightings of internal vistas and
omens, wherein Miss Brann looks
at herself as a sample soul.
In the preface to this beautiful
volume that fits perfectly in one
hand, Miss Brann describes her
manner of composition: "I wrote
these thoughts down on about two
thousand sheets, two to three
thoughts per paper, and I kept
them in some used manila
envelopes, the earliest of which
bore a postmark ofI972."
Most of the sheets lacked a
notation of when and where they
were written, she added. "Whether
about 5,000 articulated notion per
person per lifetime is about average
or over or below I cannot tell; they
certainly stacked up high."
Miss Braun's instructions for
approaching the book are these:
"Open anywhere and if it irks you,
try another page. This book can be
long or short-As You Like It."
Any Johnnie who has been lucky enough
to enjoy a conversation ,vith Miss Brannin seminar or outside of it-will understand
why this little book is a gem. For those
who haven't had the pleasure, these interesting thoughts-a sample of which are
provided below-wiJJ offer a glimpse of the
experience.
Some people's chatter, God bless them, is
actually self-expression, but for others it's
self-sacrifice on the altar of sociability to
join in, and betokens not so much interest
in what is being said as interest in the mere
expression of interest, that is, the desire to
show civility-and to look each other over.
Sometimes it gets screamingly boring, and
then you catch a glimpse of one of these
others feeling likewise-and start a real
conversation.
{BIBLIOF I LE}
{BIBLI OF ILE }
maunder on for a long, long time. When
the last judgment is ready to be made we'll
be Jong gone.
To love your country is to love it openeyedly, sometimes for its flaws, sometimes
with its flaws, and most often in spite
of its flaws. It's not so different from
personal love.
The heroism of maintenance is severely
underrated. It is the resistance to human
and natural eno·opy- that cosmic
downward trend (which Lucretius
symbolized in the fundamental fall
of his atoms), that tendency toward
deterioration and featureless
homogeneity that will obtain if the
world is left alone. (In Washington
State I Ltscd to see a dentists' billboard saying "Ifyou ignore your
teeth they' ll go away.") But it isn't
only nattue and humanity in its
natural course that needs to be kept
going against time's grain; we also
need a counterinsurgency against
mindless novelty. Between entropy
and innovation-that's where my
heroes a.re at work.
"Vacation" is a sad word, the
vacancy of time after the press of
business. "Leisure" is a lovely
word, the freedom of time for longbreathed projects.
No one has sufficiently said what a
feeling is. I tis pathos, something
passably suffered, affect. Yet it is
also motion, being moved out of
oneself, emotion. No more do we
know what pleasure is, especially
psychic pleasure: It seems to be the
aboriginal accompaniment, not so
much reaction as concurrent commentbut every analytic description covertly
involves the word "pleasant." All the
definitions I've read of feeling or pleasure
are either diversionary or circular: Even
my trusty Heritage Dictionary can do no
better than to lead me from feeling to
affect and from affect to feeling. And the
definitions given in books circumvent
saying what passions are by telling how
they arise and what they're good for-as if
origin and effect were what is wanted.
Miss BRANN's OPEN SECRETS COVERS TOPICS
INCLUDING MUSIC , INTIMACY, MEMORY, AND
IMAGINATION.
Many of us feel ourselves to be living on
the cusp of time: Great questions are about
to be settled: Is nature infinitely transformable, or does she collapse if her own
Jaws are used too intrusively against her?
Is human nature indefinitely malleable or
does it ttrrn monso·ous when pushed too
far? How much virtuality can the human
imagination absorb before it loses its own
actuality?, etc. I don't think anything wi II
be concluded in the short run: Both nature
and humans will accommodate to more
impositions than anyone imagined and
rebel at less provocation than one would
have thought, and that way things will
{ THE
Co
LL E
c
E .
St. John 's College. Spring 2005
"Questioning" this or that is an act of
covert aggression. Question-asking is an
act of persistent love.
)
P ROFILES IN TERROR: T HE GUIDE
TO M IDDLE EAST TERRORIST
O RGANIZATIONS
By Aaron Mannes (AGI97)
Rowman & Littlefield, 2004
incc global terrorism emerged
in the 2.ISt century, it has
spawned dozens of shadowy
groups with elusive leaders.
Aaron Mannes (AGI97) sheds
light on 20 terrorist organizations in the Middle East and the regional
groups that are affiliated ·with them in his
book Pro.files in Terror: The Guide to
Middle East Terrorist Organizations.
Mannes, who wrote his handbook for
journalists, researchers, and those who
work in counterterrorism, describes
aspects of each terrorist group, including
leadership, ideology, financial support,
targets and tactics, and areas of operation.
"The modern terrorist phenomenon
really started when the age of media began.
It is political theater," says Mannes, who is
careful to distinguish modern terrorism
from other insurgencies throughout
history. "Terrorists play off the nature of
our modern, wired society and use mass
media to spread fear and their agendas.
Terrorists legitimize violence. They say the
society is so awful that violence as a whole
is appropriate."
When beginning his research,
Mannes was fascinated by what he
calls "asymmetrical warfare," and
says, "First-world countries such as
the United States are unbeatable,
but terrorism has emerged as part
of a vast equalizing process." Looking to the future , Mannes predicts
more terrorism. "There are different evolutions - the terrorism that
achieves a goal, such as the Madrid
train bombings that effectively got
Spain to pull out of Iraq. And there
arc the catastrophes that wreak
major havoc, violence as a goal in
and of itself."
Mannes was inspired by his tutors
at St. John's to pursue his interest
in public policy and writing. "All
my tutors were terrific," says
Mannes, "but Leo Raditsa (now
deceased) helped me even after my
graduation from St. John's. He
taught me about the importance of
freedom, liberty, and governments
that protect and preserve that.
Governments that undermine
this are viscious."
Mannes served as director ofresearch
at the Middle East Media Institute in
Washington, D.C., from r998 until 200I.
He currently works at the University of
Maryland's "Mind Lab," where he models
terrorist networks. ♦
During times of public stress, like war,
certain mental illnesses and suicides are
said to decrease. That's surely not an
argument for the redemptive power of war
but an illumination of the human condition
in peace: Normalcy is the most stringent
tester of sou.ls.
A PUBLICATION
OF JINSA PRESS
AARON MANNES' HANDBOOK DETAILS
20 TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN THE
MIDDLE EAST.
"Open anywhere and
ifit irks you~
try another page. "
Contrary motions: The young at their best
are intensely introspective but all their
dreams are for the world. The old a.re in
fact rooted in that world but their meditations turn inward. -Like passing ships,
they send tenders across and board briefly,
bringing news and victuals. Less fancifully,
coming and going, we've got things to tell
each other.
EvA BRANN, TUTOR
Childlike and childish: the ever-young at
heart and the willfully infantile. The first
are quirky but lovable, the second just
irritating.
Some looking into themselves come to the
limit and say, "I am the ground." Others
see no end and say, "It hath no bottom."
But perhaps you shouldn't search in the
soul but through the soul.
"A friend is another self." If so, why
bother? One ofmc is enough. No, it's just
because souls are never transparent to each
other v-.rithout remainder that they see each
other at all. Mutual opacity keeps us two,
together but unmerged.
We humans a.re temporally rooted in the
world, atemporally in the soul. Good
communities mediate these two realms
of the secular and the transcendent: Their
members live their daily life mindful of
something beyond.
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John 's College. Spring 2005
Do my colleagues see themselves, mutatis
mutandis, as I see my sclf?-a being of
dubious gravity, urgently perfectionist
about small things and dilatory about great
ones, an everlasting amateur frivolously
suspicious of expertise, kept callow by the
luck of life that has preserved me from
chronic tragedy, extensively introspective
in leisure rested from responsibility-an
old woman with an unconscionably
young soul? ♦
)
�{ALUMNI
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
PROFILE}
THE HosT OF "MARKETPLACE" TUNES IN
David Brown (AGJ95) takes a liberal arts approach to business news
BY PATRICIA DEMPSEY
mid Brown (AGl95)
says the long oral
tradition in radio is
still vibrant and vital.
"There's more time on
radio to engage in the
art of this tradition, and there's more
room for nuance."
Brown is speaking from the Frank
Stanton Studios in Los Angeles, Calif.,
just a few hours before he goes on the
air to engage millions oflistcncrs with
his agile conversation as host of
"Marketplace," public radio's national
series about business and life. There's a
rustle of paper as an assistant slips an
urgent message under Brown's nose,
but right now his focus is elsewhere.
His meandering Southern speech downshifts, and Brown, who once customized
and sold Harley-Davidson motorcycles,
relaxes into a conversation about
road trips.
"When I think of favorite road trips,
one that stands out was the road trip of
the summer of '95, from Boston to
Annapolis to attend the Graduate
Institute," says Brown. "I was working
in Boston for Monitor Radio at the time;
Monitor is the public radio broadcast
produced by the Christian Science
Monitor newspaper. They offered me this
gig to host and I said, 'Hey, I'm happy to
do this hosting gig but this program at
St. John's is important to me.' "Brown
asked for the summer off to finish his
Graduate Institute studies. " I t is so vivid
in my mind, when I was finally crossing
the border into Maryland and feeling so
happy to be heading south of the MasonDixon again. And Annapolis as a place
has such resonance for me."
A native of Georgia, Brown lived in
Annapolis in the early 1990s when he
worked as Washington, D.C., bureau
chief and chief national correspondent
for Monitor Radio and Monitor
Television. In one of those happy
I
expand your perspective, you can see that
each point of view in fact is true."
"I also think quite often of
Tocqueville's Democracy in America,"
says Brown, who owns three copies of
Tocqueville's book and keeps one on
his bedside table. "When I look at the
domestic scene, so many of his
observations hold true today, such
as the religiosity of Americans, the
role race plays in the American
consciousness, the tension between
rugged individualism and civic duty, so
many of the things that made Americans
peculiar creatures in Tocqueville's time
continue to define us on the world stage
today." Of his three editions of the book,
Brown says "one is a precious, dog-eared
volume with my class notes, another is an
inexpensive paperback I can pack up and
take along as a casual read, and the third
is a library edition.' "
Brown offers another insight that he
culled from reading the great books.
"I think about art and science, how
radio brings these together and how at
St. John's, the concept of art versus
science, and the melding of the two, was
part of the curriculum discussion ," says
Brown. "Here in radio, you have storytelling-the art of telling-a-story-part of
radio-and then you also engage in the
science, the journalism, getting the
facts right. This is what we do here at
'Marketplace.' I t's a liberal arts approach
to looking at business," says Brown.
"At 'Marketplace' we have what we call
'front-yard stories' that touch a deep
chord, such as an issue of democracy and
justice. What's at stake when there's a
courthouse shooting in Atlanta? We look
at the social phenomena, the context
shaping the backdrop for the events that
are shaping the business news. Then
there are 'backyard stories' on topics like
bond prices that are not big on curb
appeal, but need to be included. Then we
mix it up-this is what makes us unique."
''.[fyoufree your.se!f
expandyourper.spective~
you can .see that each
pointefview in/act is
true. "
DAVID BROWN (AC195)
accidents that make a journey memorable,
when Brown was living in Annapolis he
stumbled upon St. John's, a perfect match
for his appetite for intellectual discovery.
" I was searching for something to keep
me mentally charged and stimulated,"
says Brown.
At a political function in Annapolis,
Brown met a recent GI grad. "He was
enthusiastic, incandescent even, about
his experience at St. John's. So I met
with [graduate admissions coordinator]
Miriam Callahan-Hean. At that time
the Graduate Institute was housed in
Mellon Hall and we walked around and
I remember thinking, 'This is extraordinary-there are conversations about
conversations going on here.' "
The ideas Brown encountered in his
conversations at St. John's find a forum
in his distinctive radio show today. "I ate
it up. I loved it. The reading, the being
exposed to ideas I wouldn't have exposed
myself to if left to my own devices," says
Brown. "I'm not a math person, but not a
week goes by that I don't think about
Lobachevsk.--y and Euclid and parallels.
You can see it, visualize it-the parallel
lines into infinity. I remember thinking,
'This is not possible. How can these
mutually exclusive ideas-Euclid's classic
definition of parallels and Lobachevsky's
vision oflines infinitely approaching
each other-both be true?' "says Brown.
"This opened a way of seeing things for
me in journalism. If you free yourself,
{ THE
Co LL EC & •Sc.John's College, Spring 2005
}
Brown recalls the skepticism
surrounding "Marketplace," when it was
a new show. "In 1989 there was this
cheeky upstart business program that
everyone said would fail," says Brown.
By 2000 Brov-m, who had just graduated
from Washington and Lee Law School,
was recruited to be senior producer of
American Public Media's "Marketplace,"
and du ring his tenure the show garnered
several awards, including the prestigious
Peabody Award for excellence in journalism. By 2003, Brown was host, a
challenge he relishes. "There is something that happens every day between
10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. when we go on the
air. I'm no CPA, so I have to synthesize
this, present it in an interesting,
engaging way co tell it to our listeners.
There's a pressure, but it's a good
pressure, and you spin out the story.
It's exciting, challenging, thrilling," says
Brown. "When I go home, I get calls from
friends and they say, 'That made so much
sense. I'm so glad you put it that way.'
That makes it meaningful for me-that I
got through, communicated. St. John's
prepared me; all the underlying conversations prepared me."
Brown is another hour closer to going
on the air, but he has one more story
about the GI. " Of the four GI segments,
I put off math until the last semester.
Lobachevsky, the logic, I wrestled with it.
One day I was having coffee with [tutor
': ..he [Mr. Kutler) knew
I was .straining. He told
m~ 'You 'fl.see this. You 'fl
get it. Give it time. ' "
DAVID BROWN (Ac195)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John's College. Spring 2005)
DAVID BROWN WORKED BRIEFLY IN TELEVISION,
BUT PREFERS RADIO. "IT'S BEEN SAID 'THE
PICTURES ARE BETTER IN RADIO' ANO IT'S
TRUE."
emeritus] Mr. Kutler. I think he knew I
was straining. He told me, 'You'll see
this. You'll get it. Give it time.' He was
right. It was a loving, reassuring gesture.
He could see I was looking for an intellectually challenging experience. 'You
might really love law school,' he said to
me.'' He knew I was interested in talking
about ideas. He knew I was wondering,
'Where do I go from here?'"
Fortunately Brown ended up at
"Marketplace," adding intellectual spice
and artful conversation to evening
commutes. ♦
�{ALUMNI
1935
"1 'm very proud to have been a
II
graduate ofSJC," writes
MELVILLE L. B1SGY£R. "I'm a
very old man now (91+) and as I
look back, those four years are
among the highlights. The
memories of my fellow
students, the wonderful profs,
the staff, the old buildings, my
dorm-Pinkney Hall-the bell
rope running through a classroom atop McDowelJ, the
library, the gym, the proms.
Is the Sugar Bowl still in town?
The connict with Hopkins in
'35, the front campus, the old
Liberty Tree, which I know is
now gone. The All-American
lacrosse teams-all part of a
wonderful memory. A biologyzoology class of four students
and two profs-wow-other
memories we won't discuss, but
think about with many a
chuck.le. All the best."
s. WOODMAN is "still
practicing law here in upstate
New York and traveling quite a
bit to Jtaly and Australia in my
spare time. Would like to hear
from any classmates who are
still around."
R ICJWlD
Ii
I
{ A LU M N I
NOTES}
Q UITE IMMERSED
(class of1955) received the
"Conductor of the Year, 2004" award from the
Illinois Council ofOrchcstras. He is now
conductor laureate of the New Philharmonic
and Du Page Opera. He has accepted the
_ ~ _ ~ artistic directorship of the opera program at
North Park University in Chicago and is quite immersed in
composilion and painting. ♦
-
-
-
-
AROLD B AUER
-
1950
1943
has been
thinking about the college,
particularly about the reading
list, and especially about
Proust. " It seems to me," he
writes, "that since my time, the
Program has improved with the
two years of Greek and French,
the greater emphasis on writing
and laboratories without
Humphreys' sha1..-y floors. The
one disimprovcmcnt has been
the dropping of Proust from the
fourth year. Swann's Way,
although a part of a larger
whole, is a complete work in
itself. The author of a recent
article in The Atlantic Monthly
found it incredible that one can
graduate from Harvard without
reading Shakespeare or Proust.
How can a 'great books' program not include Proust? It is
time to include him again."
M ILTON P ERLMAN
"My wifeof 56 years, Phyllis,
(we were married two weeks
after graduation under the Liberty Tree) and I will be moving
to a Quaker-sponsored continuing-care retirement community,
Kendal on Hudson, on July
first," wTites P ETER D AVIES. "It
is close to New York and
Riverdale, so we will continue
to enjoy theater, concerts, dining, and city life, and friends in
Riverdale. We stayed with that
Republican, GERRY H OXBY
(class of1947); argued into the
night last August while in Ohio
campaigning for John Kerry!
I'm still representing the
United Nations at Safer World
(a British think tank) and working on a conference in July on
preventing armed conllict."
:
The eldest son of O SCAR L OUIS
L ORD, Lance W. Lord, an Air
Force four-star general, has
been made Commander of Air
Force Space Command.
1944
LINDSAY CLENDANIEL writes,
"I am happy to represent other
alumni who, like myself, didn't
graduate from St. John's but
from other institutions, yet
consider St. John's my alma
mater!"
{ TH E
Co
LL£
c
E.
A tribute from Eo LYNCH: "My
belief is that St. John's is one of
the finest educational houses in
the country. I did not graduate-I completed two full years
and did not return. I came to
St. John's from high school.
My classmates were men who
had attended other colleges,
gone to the war and returned to
St. John's to be enlightened and
truly free. I was intimidated by
their vast knowledge of the
world and the things in it.
Anyway, I guess I wasn't the
brightest bulb in the lamp,
nor the most energetic. I love
St. John's, and I always will.
I will never regret my time
there."
R OBERT G. HAZO
FREDERICK P. D AVIS: "We 3-Ds
in the low desert of Southern
California (son David, wife
Rita, and self) still plug along
respectively at a Riverside Nursing Home (broken, infected
legs), Rita on full-time oi,..-ygen,
and I without a driver's
license-revoked! But church
volunteers have supplied us
with food and rides to church,
etc., since this cruel blow of the
OMV on November 2.4, 2.004.
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
is the most reliable and
strongest expression of real
love."
JAMES and AMY (class of1959)
JOBES are both retired. An1y
serves as an occasional supply
priest in Massachusetts. They
have three grandchildren now,
in Massachusetts: Amanda, 4; in
Georgia: Elijah, 2., and Sophia,
1 month.
is still writing
political books entitled Minorily
Rufe. "It goes slowly but well.
Publishing articles in the metropolitan newspaper here and in
the Washington Report on the
Middle East on doings in the
Middle East, especially Iraq and
Lebanon. Gave my annual
lecture on "Love" on Valentine's
Day to undergraduates. Attendance was good. Women outnumbered men by 2, or 3 to 1,
surpTising since maternal love
our regular lives and welcoming
friends in these more spacious
quarters."
M ARYFRANCES McCtrrCHAN is
retired from the National Park
Service. She lives in Annapolis,
is learning to play the flute, and
has three grandchildren. She's
also looking forward to her class
reunion in 2.008.
"I have finally found the Great
Hall ofSJC here in Santa Fe and
attended a wonderful concert by
Joan Zucker last week. Now that
I know where it is, my wife and I
will attend more concerts,"
writes MICHAEL TRUSTY.
1 959
H ARVEY and MARY (class of
1958) GOLDSTEIN are
planning ahead. "Members of
the class ofr959 are already
starting to plan for our 50th
reunion-log on to the class of
'59 Web page on the alumni site
for the continuing story."
1960
USAF, is
enjoying retirement. "Marie
and I are thoroughly enjoying
life in the slow lane. After many
years of high-stress/high-travel
jobs, having time to read, soak
in the spa, shoot pool, frequent
auction and estate sales, and
generally do whatever I want,
whenever I want, is wonderful!
The only downside is the great
blue heron that eat our fish, and
the deer that eat our shrubbery.
COL. JOHN J. LANE,
1953
1949
I
Lately "Seniors Helping
Seniors" (for a price) have
taken Rita and me to see doctors, get haircuts, etc., throughout this valley. But at 60 miles,
Riverside is out of their range.
It's over three years since we've
seen David. Rita and I shall
never forget SJC, where we met
at St. Anne's Church. I obtained
a classic liberal education."
CECILY SHARP-WHITEHILL
writes: "Along with the
seminars my colleagues and I
conduct several times a year for
senior executives of professional service firms on the topic
of management of PSFS (this is
a five-day course and qualifies
as education, not just training),
I continue to consult for firms
on the topic of business
communications, both spoken
and written. Having wearied of
relatively long, gray winters
and snow shoveling, I moved
permanently to Osprey, Fla.,
immediately south of Sarasota.
It's delightful here."
1966
"On December 10, we moved
into our new house designed
by us and our architect,"
reports J ULIA B USSER OU PREY.
"It has been an exciting, but
all-consuming project, and we
now look forward to resuming
{ THE
33
N O TES }
1968
ELIZABETH A. D OBBS (A) writes:
"I have an article coming out in
the Chaucer Review on an allusion to Ovid's Narcissus and
Echo story in The Franklin's
Tale. It's called 'Re-sounding
Echo.'"
G. K EENS (SF) is a professor of Pediatrics, Physiology,
and Biophysics at the Keck
School of Medicine of the University of Southern California
and a member of the Division of
Pediatric Pulmonology at Children's Hospital, Los Ange les. "I
was recently appointed Director
of Pediatric Subspccialty Fellowship Education at Children's
Hospital," he writes. "I have
crested a year-long course in
scholarship skills (research
methodology and proficiency in
teaching), which emphasizes
small-group interaction rather
than reliance on lectures. I conduct research in pediatric respiratory disorders and am investigating an innovative hypothesis
that the cerebellum has a majoT
role in control of breathing."
THOMAS
CllARL£S B . WATSON (A) writes:
"Anya Watson graduates from
Connecticut College this year
and has been awarded the Rolex
North American Our World
Undergraduate Scholarship
for 2.005, presented at the
Explorers Club in New York
City in April 2.005. It provides a
year's funding for undersea
research (and a Rolcx watch).
Her undergraduate major was
marine biology with a minor in
Russian and European studies
(age 2.1). Ivan most recently
reports from Kyrgyzstan for
NPR after recent travel to Iraq,
Beirut, Turkey, Iran, and other
newsworthy locations (age 28).
Michael, an avid scuba and
windsurfing enthusiast, is
working on Martha's Vineyard.
Other alumni are encouraged to
look us up in Connecticut and
Martha's Vineyard."
"Hello to H ENRY CONSTANflNE
(A) and his beautiful wife,
Christine," writes STEVE H ANFr
(A). "Thanks for the iospirational message-see you at the
reunion."
LIVING HISTORY
-
(SF74) continues to direct the Public H istoTy
program at New Mexico State University. His book
,_ ON H UNNER
Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth ofan Alomic
Communily came out last fall from the University of
Oklahoma Press. His program at NMSU has published
:_ •
books on Santa Fe and Las Cruces and conducts living
._. history events from the Spanish Colonial and Great
Depression era. Mary Ellen, his wife, is finishing a graduate
degree in nursing, and t heir son Harley is a first-year student at
Seattle University. ♦
Co LL E c £.St.John's College. Spring ~005 }
i
�34
{ALUMNI
NOTES}
{ALUMNI
SUSHEILA H ORWITZ (SF)
writes: "I'm still alive and still a
member of Madonna House.
I spent the last seven years in a
small city in eastern Russia.
I loved the people there and
would love to retllrn."
LIFE AT THE ALTERNATIVE
Julia Goldberg (SF91) and the Santa Fe Reporter keep an eye on the city
BY ROSEMARY
HARTY
here's a great deal of hard
work, long hours, and modest compensation attached to
the work Julia Goldberg
(SF91) docs as editor of
The Reporter, Santa Fe's
alternative weekly newspaper. So on a
recent winter's night, she was at peace
with relaxing her journalistic ethics just a
little to accept a free ticket to a sold-out
lecture by linguist Noam Chomsky.
Goldberg has always loved language,
and there's no better outlet for someone
in Jove with words than the satisfying
grind of putting out a weekly newspaper,
especially one as feisty and in-your-face as
The Reporter.
A life-size stand-up ofBuffy the Vampire
Slayer, adorned with Goldberg's press
pusses, overlooks the piles of newspapers,
files, and other materials stacked all
around Goldberg's office. After five years
as editor, she's had time to get comfortable in her job. Her path to The Reporter
was a simple choice.
" I wanted to WTite, and I didn't want to
leave Santa Fe," she explains.
Like many Johnnies, the Philadelphiaarea native was guided to St. John's by a
high school teacher who recognized
Goldberg's love of books. She loved the
language in the Program, especially
ancient Greek; however, " junior math
almost killed me," she says, shuddering at
the memory. She became a music assistant
and delved into journalism by editing
The Moon, the student newspaper, during
her junior and senior years.
Established in 1974, The Reporter is one
of the oldest independent weeklies in the
country. Given away free in boxes all over
town, it has a circulation of 21,000 and a
core of dedicated readers. "We have a
great relationship with Santa Fe, and we're
really considered a part of the city," she
says. On the other hand, Goldberg adds,
"we're always struggling to break even."
As editor Goldberg oversees two
reporters, a full-time art director, a
part-time assistant director, and a dozen
or so freelancers. 'Iwo other Johnnies
currently work for the paper: Andy Dudzik
(SFGI92) is the publisher; Jonanna
Widner (SFGloo) is assistant editor.
Many Johnnies have been on staff or
freelanced for the paper. Even when Goldberg's reporters are young and green, they
share a passion for breaking news stories
and digging imo complicated issues.
"I'm working with really smart people,"
she says. "We've broken a lot of stories in
the last year and a half."
"The Short Life of Jimmy Villanueva"
revealed that the county jail violated the
---
constitutional rights of prisoners by
failing to treat their health problems.
"Soldier's Heart" probed the psychological problems soldiers faced on their return
from Iraq. And a shocking lack of services
for autistic children in New Mexico was
exposed in "The Lost Ones." Goldberg
has won numerous awards from the New
Mexico Press Association and the National
Federation of Press Women. She created
and directed the Hip-Hop Voter Project,
designed co inspire young Hispanic
residents in New Mexico to vote.
The R eporter provides an importanL
alternative to the local daily, the Santa Fe
continued on p. 3 5
organic garlic farming. Visitors
are welcome at s Dodge Corner,
New Vineyard, Maine."
(SF)
has a short story in the online
journal VerbSap: http://verbsap.com/2oo5mar/sarai.html.
"Just got home from a threeweek wine and nature trip to
New Zealand," says LELIA
STRAW (A). "Love the Kiwis and
their homeland. We were there
over the U.S. election though,
and they're all mystified by the
outcome."
35
WORK AND PLAY
ARCO ACOSTA (A82) sends a hello to all his
1 973
(SF) reports:
"My daughter INDIA C L ARK
(SF01) and Challem Clark are
now living in Budapest,
Hungary, in a beautiful
apartment right over Vaci
Utaca, the main pedestrian
street. They are having a
blast and perhaps will stay
longer than the original
six-month plan."
INDIA WILL IAMS
SARAH (GANCIIER) SARAI
NOTE S }
1 974
and R ANDY P ENDLETON
(both SF) have news: "We are
delighted to announce the
marriage of our son, W ALKER
(A99), to R.Ac n EL V EDAA (SF99)
in April."
M AllTHA
"unique and talented" classmates: "I have
many great memories of our college years and
hope the best for you all and your families.
I continue to examine my life daily. Work is:
legal, filmmaking, public school teaching
K-12; Play/other: WTiting, guitar, music, recording, chess,
basketball. Personal: divorced. Peace and Prosperity to you allplease call when you're on the West Coast."♦
(A) directs, supervises, and interprets MRI
examinations of the brain and
body at 30 sites in 12 states.
"I teach and lecture on brain
development, brain imaging,
and brain pathology at
Georgetown University and
elsewhere. My four wonderful
children never cease to amaze,
amuse, confound, and inspire
me as they display the intricacies of brain development to
me, up close and personal."
JOIIN REES
1 975
C YNTIIIA Swiss (A) has been
elected to president of the
Maryland/DC Chapter of the
American String Teachers
Association. "I have organized
statewide certification exams
for young string players," she
writes. "I also schedule
workshops on Suzuki String
Teaching Technique. Our
chapter published a newsletter
called Stringendo, and I have
contributed several articles."
I RVINC WILLIAMS (A) is
"moving to the country estateroom for a pony-in July to start
continuedfromp. 34
New Mexican, says Goldberg. "They
cover what's happening; we try to be
progressive," she explains. Part of the
paper's job is to provide a guide to
enjoying Santa Fe, with special sections
on restaurants, art galleries, recreation,
and just living in the city.
The process of putting out a weekly
paper starts each Wednesday morning,
with a critique of the current paper.
Goldberg and her staff brainstorm new
story ideas, identify a cover story, and
plan what they need to report on in the
coming weeks. On Thursday, they start
working on a preliminary layout, Sunday
Goldberg spends editing the cover story,
and Monday and Tuesday are "slam days,"
as the final stories come in for editing,
headlines, and fact-checking. Tuesday
THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN
HER COMMUNITY KEEPS J ULIA GOLDBERG AT
THE REPORTER.
{THE
Co LL E c E. St. John 's College. Spring2005}
night is the press run, and on Wednesday
it starts all over again.
The Johnnies and other reporters who
work for Goldberg tend to get good training at The Reporter. But they soon head
off to New York or other cities where their
editorial skills can earn them a better
salary. After interning at the Phi/,adelphia
City Paper, the New Mexican and The
Reporter, Goldberg earned her master's
degree at the University of New Mexico.
"J:re 've broken a lot of
.stories in the last year
andaha!f"
JULIA GoLOBERC (SF9:r)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John 's College. Spring 2005 }
She acquired valuable experience at one
of her first jobs, the Rio Grande Sun,
where she covered county government,
politics, and schools. It gave her a sense
that an aggressive local paper is an
important tool of democracy.
"You need to ask questions, and you
need to listen carefully-a lot like what we
do at St. John's."
In between deadlines, Goldberg manages to get time off to enjoy the beautiful
city she's living i n. She enjoyed a recent
Community Seminar at St. John's and
vows to get up the hill more often to enjoy
campus events.
But even with the long hours, it's hard
for her to imagine giving up the work she
does at The Reporter. There's always
another story to tell. " I can't say the
perfect opportunity isn't out there, but
right now, I can't imagine a better job." ♦
�{AL U M NI
NOTE S }
{ALUMN I
37
NOT ES }
I
Beginning April I, MICHAEL
will be serving as the
regional minister for Northwest
Connecticut, responsible
for oversight of about 50
United Cht1rch of Christ
congregations.
C IBA (A)
MAUYELLEN LAWRENCE (SF)
has finished her subspecialty
training in infectious diseases
at the University of New Mexico
and is practicing medicine in
Santa Fe. She writes, "It may be
that, at last, 1 have completed
my formal medical training!"
" I've been eagerly scanning the
class notes for 21 years now, so
thought it was about time I
made a contribution," writes
} ACK A RMSTRONG (SF). I live in
West Chester, Penn., of all
places, with my wife, Ca1·men,
and kids Michael (16) and Emily
(8). I am happier than I ever
expected or deserved. I'm
printing ballots for a living,
and writing stories for my soul.
I also have a theatre with
Carmen, the Philadelphia
Shakespeare Festival, which
is the 800-pound gorilla of
hobbies. l miss you all."
ANNE M CCLARD (SF) reports
1980
" I am delighted to let everyone
know that I am now the proud
mother of Emily Sierra," writes
Gmu GLOVEU (SF). "She came
to live with me from Memphis,
Tenn., and I will be ever grateful to her birth mom for helping
me create a family. Can't wait
for you all to meet her at our
next reunion."
that NOAH MCC LARD
LEDBETTER (SF02) and DAGNY
CHICOINE-STANGL (SF01) were
married in July 2004.
STEVEN T. R EYNOLDS (A) writes:
"Landry Tait Anders Reynolds
joined the gaggle August II,
2004. The family and the
garden continue to thrive."
medical staff on January r,
2005. He will serve as president
for two years. He was previously
the medica 1staff vice president
for two years and has been the
laboratory medical director for
four years. Thia is currently
working with President William
Harvey to build a proton
therapy radiation oncology
center at Hampton University.
She has also recently been
invited to serve on the Board
of Directors for the Thomas
Jefferson National Accelerator
Facility, the American Physical
Society Division of Nuclear
Physics Program Committee,
and the Combined Theory and
Experimental Collaboration for
Quantum Thermodynamics.
Nothing but good news from
KATII EIUNE RowE (SF): "I am
still a preacher in the Episcopal
Church and still in a Denver
suburb. I'm still a speech and
language pathologist, and still
in love with my husband, Phil,
and my two ch ildren. I'm also
still glad that I went to
St. John's."
1985
writes,
"I continue to practice law in
Baltimore and am pleased to
announce that I have recently
set out on my own. Having my
own practice has allowed me to
do the cases I want to do, spend
ANNA L. D AVIS (A)
ERIN MCVADON ALBRlGHT (A)
welcomed his first grandson,
Patrick Alexander, into the
world one year ago.
News from BARRY H ELLMAN and
CYNT111A " TwA" KEPPEL (both
A): Barry became president of
Mary Immaculate Hospital
GoozILLA PHASE
STEVEN CRAMER (A) is an
attorney in private practice in
New York City. He lives in
Maplewood, N.J., with his
wife and two daughters, the
youngest adopted from China
in December 2004.
-
-
ife is "good and busy" for A LEX (AGI93) and
ELLERMANN. Alex works in the
national security field, flies C-13os in the Navy
Reserve, and is working toward his second
master's with the Naval War College's Distance
- - - - • Education Program. Vanessa practices Jaw with a
Georgetown firm that specializes in class actions. Son Alex, 5, is
going through a Godzilla phase at the moment, "which is pretty
fun," they write. ♦
V ANESSA (A93)
.J
{ THE
1:
Co LL E c
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S1. John's College. Spring 2005
)
more time on volunteering and
pro bono cases, and most
importantly, better balance the
demands of work and family.
My husband, Richard Gordon,
and children, Aaron (IO) and
Rachel (6), and l are all well and
would love to hear from any and
all Johnnies passing through
Baltimore."
TE1uu K. LUCKE'IT (SF) worked
for GE for a long time but left
for Honeywell in 2002. "I lived
in L.A. for one year, but moved
to N.J. a year ago to become
vice president of Business
Planning for HON. I'm hoping
to move out ofN.J. back to
points west as soon as possible,
but time will tell. Beautiful
Carolyn is 12, now and a true joy,
was diagnosed with diabetes in
2001, but we manage. We grew
weary of corporate nomadic life
and bought a piece of Santa Fe
to call our 'home away from
home.' Ping us if you are either
here or there: terri.luckett@
honeywell.com."
is vice
president of operations at a
mid-size software company in
Maine. " It's quite exciting and
very busy," he writes. " I am
happily married to a woman
from Maine who makes me
laugh a great deal. For those of
you who remember my interest
in music, I wrote an orchestral
piece around 1995-96 and went
to the Czech Republic and had
it performed at a workshop for
orchestral composers. It was
really fun. Haven't written a
note since!"
K ENNETH MARTIN (A)
1986
MELISSANETfLESHI P Br-.J',EDICT
(SF) writes: "Since July of 2000
I have been director of finance
at Santa Fe Preparatory School,
released her thu-d album, Live
at Blues Alley. Her Web site is:
www.mclaniemason.com
JOHNNIE FRENCH TESTED
-
ATRICE MCSHANE (SF02) was on her way to Africa
earlier this spring: " I spent the two-and-a-ha lf years
after graduation in Portland, Ore., working at a
Montessori preschool. I got ants in my pants, shifted
direction, and applied to volunteer for the United
....
States Peace Corps. I was accepted and leave for
Burkina Faso, Africa , on March 17' An unusual way to spend
St. Patty's Day, don't you think? I'll be there for over two years,
teaching secondary math to Bw·kinahe high school students.
Let's hope my SJC French rises to the occasion! I am mighty
excited and would be more than willing to discuss the Peace
Corps application process/experience with any prospective
vo lunteers. Or just write to say "hey, you!" patsymcshane@
hotmail.com." ♦
just down the hill on Camino
Cruz Blanca from the Santa Fe
campus."
1989
"After many years in San Francisco, I've been in Denver for a
year, spending much of my time
practicing Tibetan Buddhism,"
writes LARRY SEIDL (A). "I've
been remiss in my alumni
activities, though I saw many
shining faces at reunion
number ro in '96. Twenty is
just around the bend. A warm
general hello to the community
in general, and the class ofr986
and my tutors in particular."
BURKE GURNEY (SFGI ) is
married with two children:
Kyra and Elise, ages 15 and 13.
"I am an assistant professor at
the University ofNcw Mexico in
the Department of Orthopedics,
Rehabilitation, and Physical
Therapy. I teach physiology,
orthopaedic evaluation and
treatment, professional ethics,
and gerontology. I am an avid
traveler, reader, skier, and
parent."
JAN UNDERWOOD (SF) is working
as a Spanish instructor.
AL1ZA S HAPIRO
(SF) was
recently engaged to David
Mandel.
1990
JOHN SELLERS (A) is "married to
Becky Woods and teaching
grades 8-12 math and science,
including chemistry and
physics-challenging."
THE RFV. M'N SLAKEY (SF) is
now priest-in-charge at
St. Matthew's Episcopal Parish
in Ontario, Ore.
is a fuUtime blues artist, writing and
performing original blues-rock
material as lead electric
guitarist and vocalist for the
Melanie Mason Band. She
also performs and records
traditional acoustic blues as a
solo artist. She recently
KEN TuRNBULL (A) writes:
"My wife, Leslie, and Tare both
lawyers in Washington and are
enjoying our seven-month-old
daughter, Fiona."
Co LLB c
E.
'
(SF) and her
husband arc pleased to
announce the birth of their first
child, Emma Lee Ward, born on
January 4, 2005.
J ENNIFER R YCIILI K
1991
is a 2004
winner of the National Poetry
Series award, and her second
book, Starred Wire, will be
published by Coffee House Press.
ANGIE MLINKO (A)
N ICOLE l<ALMANOR LEVY (SF)
writes, " l n August 2004, I gave
birth to our first daughter, Eve
Simone Levy. She's the apple of
our eye! My husband, Rob, and
I moved to the North Shore of
Boston last year, to Swampscott,
which is a small town next to
Salem-the Witch Capital, and
Marblehead-a sailing capital.
A fon destination with some
cultural treats! 1 am working
on a master's in Jewish studies.
Got through Jewish mysticism,
now working on a translation of
portions of the Book of Exodus.
I wish I could go to more
alumni events, it's been great
connecting!"
MELANIE M ASON (A)
{ TH E
Alrnapolis to sec his wife, SARA
ScnROEOlNGER (A92), he is logging lots of frequent-flyer miles
on bt1siness trips to China,
Thailand, and Malaysia.
1993
The commute to work for K u1n
HECKEL (A) got a lot longer in
early September 2004, when he
took a position ,vith Border
Concepts in Charlotte, N.C.
When he is not traveling back to
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
1994
JANIE BOSWORTH (SFGI) and
GEORGE F. BING HAM (SF66)
were married July 3, 2004, at
the Audubon Center in Santa
Fe. Between them, they proudly
share six children and seven
grandchildren-with another
one on the way.
finished
writing his dissertation in May
2004 and spent the summer
backpacking in Montana. " T
hiked across the Bob Marshall
Wilderness once, enjoyed the
experience, and went back for a
second passage," wTites Kroll.
"Walking through the long
eveni ng light of summer in the
northern Rockies is not to be
missed. The bears keep things
interesting, too. Talso spent
numerous days floating the
Bitterroot and Clark Fork
Rivers, drinking beer and
formulating a master plan.
I completed my Ph.D. in
Wildlifo Biology from the
University of Montana in
December 2004 and accepted a
position as a research scientist
with Wcycrhaettser Corporation
in Federal Way, Wash.
I am responsible for habitat
plann ing for the company's
Wester n timberlands, as well as
general wildlife research and
operational support. I would
enjoy hearing from anyone, and
I am anxious to jump-start
ANDREW }. K ROLL (A)
I
I
I
I
�{ALUMNI
NATHAN WILSON
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
(AGl01) UNVEILS SHROUD MYSTERIES
BY PATRICL\ DEMPSEY
ike many Johnnies,
Nathan Wilson (AGlor)
is unwilling to walk
away from an ino·iguing
question. Five years
ago, Wilson became
fascinated with the origins of the
mysterious Shroud of Turin and began
to wonder how the images ofJesus on
the cloth-believed by some to be
authentic-could have been faked.
Ultimately, with a few simple tools
Wilson demonstrated how a medieval
might have forged the images on the
shroud. His simple experiment showing that glass, paint, and sunlight
could have been used to create a
"reversed" photonegative image
sparked a media frenzy, with Wilson
appearing on shows including ABC's
World News Tonight.
Wilson (profiled in the Summer
2.002 edition of The College for his parodies
of apocalyptic novels) ruminated over two
questions: how do we know the dark image
was imposed on light linen at all? Further,
how could a forger in the Middle Ages
lighten linen without chemicals, paints,
or dyes?
"A negative image can be easily produced using only large pieces of painted
NATHAN WILSON THEORIZES THAT
C H RIS D AVI S and CARMEN
(both SF) write:
"CHARLIE B REW and P AT
BOHAN, it's high time you
stopped reading so much
Kafka!"
H ERIJIIG
SUNLIGHT TRAVELING IN AN ARC OVER
PAINTED CLASS CREATED THE
3-D IMAGE
ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN.
glass," explains Wilson. "In the Middle
Ages, glass was commonly made in large
sizes: six-by-eight feet or even nine-by-five.
It was made in a long cylinder and unrolled
into a sheet as early as the noos, a technique perfected in the 12.oos and r3oos. As
the Shroud is roughly 14 feet in length, two
pieces of glass would be necessary, both at
least six feet long. The image of the front of
alumni activities in the Puget
Sound area. I can be reached at
ajkroll64@hotmail.com."
English, Italian, and Latin, and
where Greek and Sanskrit are
offered as electives.
PATRICK SCANLON (SFGI) will
be resident clirector of School
Year Abroad's Italy campus in
Viterbo, Italy. SYA Viterbo
offers a one-year classics
curriculum for American
juniors and seniors in homestays. He and his wife, Linda,
and their four children return
to the central Italian town
(population 60,000) where
Pat had taught English for two
years previously. Now he'll
oversee a program that requires
GREG WATSON (SF) writes, "l
live in Washington State on a
beautiful island with my dog,
Rusty, and wife, Karen. During
the week I am employed as
assistant harbormaster at a
local marina, and on weekends
I teach sailing in Seattle. So I
am still using my captain's
license. Also, I am getting ready
to embark on a trip to Costa
Rica with Solar Energy International, where we will work with
locals installing renewable
energy power systems."
{ TH E
Co
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c
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the man would be produced beneath
one and the back of the man beneath
the other."
How would the forger create the
three-dimensional shading? "By painting an image on the top side of the
glass," says Wilson. "This leaves a gap
where the sunlight traveling in a 180degrec arc could penetrate at angles
that produce the 3-D shading."
Wilson used white oil paint to create
images on eight different window
panes and placed them over coarse
linen in the sun. The paint blocked the
sunlight from bleaching the darker
cloth, but everything around it was
bleached white. The results, Wilson
believes, point to one possibility for
how the shroud was faked. He detailed his
experiments in an article published in the
journal Books and Culture: "What I have
done is crudely demonstrate that such
an image could easily be produced in a
matter of weeks by wicked men with no
scruples, a little imagination, and a little
more skill." ♦
1 995
JEROME DuFFY (SFGI) is
working as an elementary
school teacher at the Chinese
American International School
in San Francisco.
ALICE BROWN and GREG
HODGES (A) are happy to
announce the birth of their
second child, Silas Wister
Hodges. "We are also pleased
to announce the completion of
Greg's doctoral thesis, "An
Ethnography Study of Lucan's
Bellum Civife," which has
St. John's College. Spring 2005}
arrived after a gestation of
many years and has earned him
a Ph.D. in classics from Ohio
State University. We arc
teaching and in the thralls of
Babydom in the Great White
North, and loving it. Fond
thoughts of all!"
CAMERON GRAHAM (SF) has
moved from South Carolina tO
the Defense Languages School
in Monterey, Calif. "I am a
specialist, and I will most Iikely
be there for a couple of years;•
he writes. "In the army, I
received an award for top
physical program at Fort
Jackson in South Carolina,
and now I am studying Arabic."
D AVID MALLEY
(A) writes:
"T didn't graduate from
St. John's, but my short time
there is a treasured memory.
For that, I am always grateful."
H EATHER (AGI)
my new company and will serve
as my launching pad for my
next year of helicopter flying,"
reports KI RA K. ZIELINSKI (SF).
"Happily, no more tourists. I'll
be flying as a utility pilot, which
means construction and
firefighting all over the western
U.S., just as Pericles would have
done had he not been occupied
with a higher calling. Same
e-mail: Hcrme5@juno.com."
and C HRIS
NOR.DLOII (AGI96) welcomed
Nicholas Nordloh into the
world on Dec. 24, 2004.
(A) and AolUENNE
(JAK0WSKI) RUIJENSTElN (A96)
have lived in the Washington,
D.C., area for five years, the last
three in Frederick, Md.
Adrienne teaches at the
Maryland School for the Deaf,
and Peter commutes to an
In tern et networking job in
Northern Virginia. Their big
news is the appearance on
the scene of Jonah Chester,
by far the littlest Rubenstein
currently extant. Born just
shy of Halloween 2004, Jonah
has made a splash among his
admirers. Blue-eyed and dark of
hair, he is considered by his
father to be "quite handsome."
Two-year-old beagle "Elway" is
said to be " adjusting well" to
the newcomer despite occasional lapses in respect for the
property rights of others.
P ETER
"Did I mention I'm engaged?"
writes APRIL I0AWALTERS (A).
"Getting married October r,
2005, to Travis Hopkins and
J'm keeping my name. Also,
I've been working at MICA as
the writing studio coordinator
almost as long as I attended
SJC!"'
1996
}ILL C111U!,'flNE NIENIIISER
(AGI ) writes: " T was recci:itly
promoted to director of strategy
at Mind and Media, Inc. in
Alexandria, Va. Last Friday I
had my first piano lesson since
1984. Upon leaving the music
store, I slammed my finger in
the car door. So far there is no
appreciable difference in my
playing ability, despite the
swelling! Hah ! "
1997
DAVID CANNELL (EC) dropped a
note from Japan: "Hidcko, the
three boys, and I are in Tokyo
for the next year or two on a
Japan Foundation fellowship,
praying it's enough to see us
thr9ugh the remainder of my
doctoral program (UC Irvine).
My thesis is on Matsuo Basho
and haikai poetry in late seventeenth-century Japan. Meantime, we're just enjoying being
here. The cherry blossoms have
come and gone-in a matter of
days! Can't wait for the next
sumo tournament. Would love
to hear from fellow EC grads
and know what's going on in
their worlds."
"I'm proud to say that I've used
up Las Vegas and am now off co
Tucson, which is the home of
{ THE
Co
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c
E.
NOTES }
39
"My company, North Star
Games, is starting to pick up
momentum," writes DOMINI C
C1tAPUCHETrF.S (A): "Cluzzle
has won several prestigious
awards as a great family game
and our next game, Trivia
Casino, was picked up by a
larger game company. It looks
likely that both games will be
available at national outlets for
the 2.005 holiday season! If so, I
will finally get a paycheck after
12 months of working for nothing except a dream. WES DONEHOWER bought an apartment in
DuPont Circle so we have been
hanging out a bit recently. Give
us a call if you're in the area
and we'll get together: 202-2536070."
1998
News from ALEXANDRA D .E.
BOOZER (A): "Jam happy to
announce that I was ma rried to
Daniel Giguere ofWindham,
Maine, on September I9, 2.004.
Last year I received my doctorate in clinical psychology from
George Washington Univers ity,
with a specialization in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. We are
currently living in Holmes
Beach, Fla., where I am
working towards 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 e-mail at: alexandra_FL@
hotmail.com."
(SF) is teaching
fifth-grade math. He and his
wife, Sara, are pleased to be
homeschooling their four
ch ildren. "This summer we
will be flying to England, where
we will be learning to build
wooden boats."
D AVID BRADEN
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
MA'ITH£\V C. JOHNSTON
(SF)
sends greetings to his long-lost
classmates. "After stints as a
teacher, a college admissions
counselor (at SJC of course),
and a theology student, I'm
pleased to report that I'm back
at St. John's in Santa Fe, working alongside the assistant dean
to improve student activities
and services. My wife, A.NNE"ITE
P RA.PASI RI (SF04), and I are
expecting a baby in mid-April
and, ifwe can negotiate home
prices here, plan to stay in SF
forever. Drop me a line if you're
in town or needing the inside
scoop on SJC developments. I
can be reached at 505-424-3292
or mjohnston@sjcsf.edu."
1999
RACHEL VE0AA (SF) and
WALKER P ENOLEOON (A)
were married April 16, 2005,
at St. Mary's College in
Moraga, Calif.
2000
ANNE MCSHANE (A) is finishing
her first year at law school at
NYU. 'Tm spending the
summer at Nebraska's ACLU.
If anybody wants to chat about
going to law school, feel free to
write me at annecarolmcshane@
yahoo.com."
BENJAMIN SHOOK (SF) writes:
" I'm making beautiful furniture with a hint of Danish and
Asian influence. Visit
www.bcnshook.com to see
my work."
DE8EllNJERE } A.NET T 01Ul£Y
(AGI) is in Seoul on a Fulbright
fellowship, studying premodern Korean literature in
�40
{OBITUARIES}
{ALUMNI NOTES}
"A GIFT FOR FRIENDSHIP": REMEMBERING STUART BOYD
preparation for her dissertation
research in the Department of
Comparative literature at Penn
State University.
BY LYNDA MYERS
TuTOR, SANTA Fe
DAVE P ROSPER (SF) moved LO
Oakland and bas a new job. "I
also have a stack ofblack-andwhite Eexlebots comic books; if
anyone wants one. let me know.
Life is pretty sweet."
2002
ALANA and JOEY CHERNTLA
(both SF) had their second little
girl, Rose Isabella, on Feb. 25.
"Our first, Sadie Pearl, will be 2
in a few weeks. Besides enjoying
our intense domesticity, Joey
runs a daycare, and I work in
publishing and tutor homeschoolers in Euclid."
2003
NATE and REBEKA H (NEE
Go·rrtOB) EAGLE (both A) are
serving as Peace Corps
volunteers in Cameroon, West
Africa. They arrived at the end
of September for training in
agroforestry and moved to their
pose, the town of Poli, in
December. Their service will
end in December 2006. You can
view photos and a blog and find
out how to get in touch at
monadology.net.
KYLIE LIEBERMAN and ZEPJ-!Yll
(both SF) planned to be
married April 30, 2005, in Las
Vegas, Nev. See their Web site,
zheartk.com for pictures and
contact information.
R ENNER
2004
ENJOLI COOKE (A) is beginning
her second year as a postbaccalaureate fellow at the
National Institutes of Health.
"I'm beginning the graduate
school application process and
am planning to attend a Ph.D.
program in molecular biology."
RHO DA FRANKLIN (A) and
}All.ED 0 1mz (AGI05) were
married December 18, 2004,
in Annapolis.
LAURA MANION (A) was featured
as a "profile of the month" on
the Web site of the Mississippi
Teacher Corps. The corps is a
two-year program that recruits
recent college graduates to
teach in critical-shortage areas
in the Mississippi Delta, in
exchange for a full scholarship
for a master's in curriculum and
instruction from the University
of Mississippi. Manion teaches
ANNAPOLIS SENIORS COMBINED ENTREPRENEURIAL SP! RIT WITH
ALTRUISM BY CREATING A"WOMEN OF !l.005" CALENDAR TO HELP RAISE
MONEY FOR THEIR CLASS GIFT. THE STUDENTS PLEDGED MONEY TOWARD
PURCHASING LOBACHEVSKY MANUALS POI\ ALL SENIORS NEXT YEAR.
THEY HOPE THEIR GESTURE WILL INSPIRE OTHER CLASSES TO DO SOME·
THING SIMILAR, WITH THE COAL THAT ALL LAB MANUALS CAN BE GIVEN TO
STUDENTS. THESE TASTEFUL CALENDARS (MAY zoo5-MAY 2006) CAN BE
PURCHASED FOR $10 THROUGH THE ADVANCEMENT OFFICE IN ANNAPOLIS:
SEND ACHECK TO ALEXANDRA FOTOS, ADVANCEMENT, P.O. Box 2800,
ANNAPOLIS, MD 21404.
seventh- and eighth-grade
English at a middle school in
Arcola, Miss.
TATIANA HAIUUSON (A) was
married to Rob Harrison on
June 28, 2004.
RYAN R.lSING (A.GI) is attending
the University of Kansas School
of Law, where he hopes to
graduate on their fast track in
two years, rather than three.
He is at work on a novel that he
hopes to be the first in a ninevolume series. ♦
{ TH E C o LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
WHAT'S UP?
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 October;
deadline for the alumni notes
sect.ion is August 15.
Cla;;snotes posted to the college'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 2r404;
roscmary.harty@sjca.edu
IN SANTA FE:
The College .Magazine
St. John's College
u6o Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
When Stuart Boyd retired from the college in
1988, he was presented with a scroll that read:
To Stuart Boyd, Artist, writer, healer ofsouls,
lover ofknowledge, and teacher ofthe Books:
A testimony to lzis contribution ofover 22
years to the intellectual and convivial delights
ofthe College. "He was a man... we shall not
look upon his like again. "
His humanity, wit, common sense, and love
of life were celebrated again at a memorial
held on the Santa Fe campus at the end of
January, a week after he died of a heart attack
at his home near Can1busavie, Scotland.
Mr. Boyd joined the faculty of St. John's in
1966, when the Santa Fe campus was still in
its infancy. In the words of his wife, Nan, "At
St. John's Stuart found his spiritual home."
Before coming to the college Mr. Boyd had
already led a rich and varied life. He was born
on January 3, 1922, in Aberdeen, Scotland.
In his memoir, The Wind.swept Child, he
describes his childhood in Scotland between
the two world wars as a precious, fragile, and
fleeting time.
When World War II interrupted his
graduate work at Aberdeen University,
he volunteered for the Parachute
Regiment and saw active service in
Sicily and North Africa before being
wounded and captured at Arnhem
in the Netherlands in September
1944. (The story of that disastrous
mission is recounted in the book
The Bridge Too Far.) He spent the
remainder of the war in prison
camps near the Polish-German
border.
After the war, Mr. Boyd completed
his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in
clinical psychology, taught at
several universities in the UK and
the United States, and eventually
joined the faculty of New Mexico
Highlands University, where he
became chairman of the Psychology
Department. At Highlands he met
Robert Bunker (then chairman of
the Highlands' English and
philosophy deparonents and now
tutor emeritus of St. John's).
Ralph Swentzell (now also tutor
emeritus) was a student of both and
what the Confucianists would callJen or
benevolence for his fellow man."
Mr. Boyd's intellectual interests spread
quickly as he taught through the Program
and he became a loved and respected tutor.
Mara Robinson (SFGI83), a former member
of the college's Board ofVisitors and
Governors, first met him in a Community
Seminar, later studied with him in the
Graduate Institute, and became a close
friend. "Stuart was a brilliant, inspiring
teacher and a charismatic man whose classes
always overfilled with students cager to
'sit at his feet' and learn," she recalls.
" His knowledgeable and entertaining
leadership won over, not only many students
through the years, but an enormous number
of townspeople as well."
Faculty colleagues remember Mr. Boyd as
something of an iconoclast, as the faculty
meeting min Lites he wrote as faculty secretary
in :r974 show. According to Mr. Swentzell,
" Stuart, although loving the formal, was
always strongly sensitive about tendencies
toward pompous elitism or hypocrisy. He
valued straight, honest talk-preferably
accompanied by wit and eloquence,
both of which he had in abundance." Tutor Jorge Aigla remembers the way Mr. Boyd welcomed
him to the faculty: "Twenty years
ago it was my good fortune to be
paired with Stuart Boyd for my first
freshman seminar-a wonderful way
to be initiated into our educational
venture. I soo n learned with Stuart
to read honestly, carefully, sensitively; to respect the authors, to
laugh with them (I never managed
to laugh at them, as Stuart occasionally did), and to appreciate the
insights and awakening of our
students. His common sense,
wisdom, advice, courage, and sense
of honor were a great h elp to me."
In the early days of the Santa Fe
campus Mr. Boyd's gift for friendship and his capacity for fun were
cohesive forces among the faculty.
recalls a seminar co-led by "these Lwo most
philosophically exciting professors. I think it
had to do with science and religion, or maybe
it was
existentialism. Students talked about Stuart's
frequent exclamations in class whenever
Bunker would hint at the possibility of God's
existence, something to the effect that he
'didn't see any need for Easter Bunnies
running across his systematic reasoning.' "
In 1966, Mr. Boyd and Mr. Swentzell,
encouraged by Bob Bwlker (who had come
to St. John's the year before), joined the
fledgling Santa Fe faculty. Mr. Boyd served
both as a tutor and as campus psychologist.
As Nan Boyd observes, "Stuart always
managed to find time, and the right words,
when someone was in distress or in need of
wisdom. I know there are students without
number who have cause to be grateful to him,
not only for his role as a tutor, but also for
getting them through emotional problems to
graduation in one piece." Ralph Swentzell
adds, "What I most admired in Stuart was his
blunt honesty and genuine humani ty. He had
a great capacity for sympathetic compassion,
continued on nextpage
STUART BOYD WITH FANG IN
DoRNACH, SCOTLAND.
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�{OB I T UA RI ES}
continuedfromp. 41
According to Torn Harris, tutor emeritus,
"Stuart helped us form such strong bonds..
.we all resonated with his warmth and care for
us. Did we not dance beautifully and wildJy
then! With uncontained energy we danced on
into the night! He always had a wonderful
laugh. I hear it now." Nan Boyd adds, 'Tm
perfectly sure everyone of you remembers
occasions when the room was almost lit-up by
his laugh and general merriment-there was
nothing, absolutely nothing, he enjoyed more
than a gathering of good friends exchanging
stories and making each other laugh."
Mr. Boyd had a distinctive, very Scottish
presence on campus. Many remember his
military bearing-not quite a swagger-when
he arrived at waltz parties in full regimentals.
Even after 2.0 years, he found the bright sun
of New Mexico oppressive and lamented the
chill and clamp of home. Rumor has it that his
favorite philosopher remained fellow Scot
FACULTY M EETING MINUTES,
SANTA FE:
AN EXCERPT
Nov. 21, 1974
Stuart Boyd, Faculty Secretary
Dean Ncidorf, presiding, judging a
quorum to be present, asking for and
receiving, approval of the minutes of the
previous faculty meeting (noting the
objection by Mr. Jones, whose presence
and words had been reported but whose
absence and silence were the facts, ru1d the
correction by Mr. Venable who suggested
that something had been "evoked" from
Mr. Sacks, not "invoked" as reported nor
"provoked" as intended) invited Mr. Steadman to justify his request that a special
faculty meeting be called for Saturday,
November 2.3, a request to which
Mr. Steadman responded with zest.
Mr. Ncidorf then linked this specific
event with a request for Faculty discussion
of the suggestion that Facul ty Meetings not
be held at the time which had been agreed
on and which had become the tradition,
i.e. Thursday Afternoon, but that we tinker
with this arrangement, to find extra time
so that discussions could last even longer.
Drew wondered out loud if time could not
be saved by streamlining our procedures.
Robinson reminded the Faculty that the
AT 72, MR. B OYD DONNED HIS PARATROOPER'S SUIT FOR A JUMP IN THE NETHERLANDS.
David Hume. When Mr. Boyd retired from
the college, he and his wife returned to
raison d'etre for establishing the Thursday
Afternoon Faculty Meeting was to protect
Saturdays, and that to meet on Saturday
morning would see the remorseless,
insidious, and irrevocable engulfment of
all the hours of daylight and sunshine, in
accordance with Parkinson's Law. Dean
Neidorf finally pronounced that the
thought of rescheduling anything seemed
to involve great difficulty and pain, that
tradition must be respected, that he would
call Thursday afternoon Faculty Meetings
at l p.m. instead of1:30 p.m., and that he
would do what he could to streamline the
meeting procedures.
The Dean then asked for comments on
the recent All-College Seminar. There were
enthusiastic responses from some who felt
that it brought together those who would
otherwise not be so brought, with consequent excitements....Robinson, noting
the excitements that some had experienced, wondered if all seminars could not
be of this nature. The Dean paused, then
remaiked that of course such a suggestion
could be countenanced, but that he was
sure in his experience of the Faculty that
even in the event that a majority approved
such an idea, that that same majority
would reject taking any action. There was
some further conversation about seminars
and books, in which was heard the
{T
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43
{OBITU AR I ES }
Scotland and settled in a small village near
the northern coast, cold and rainy enough to
satisfy even him. There he read, gardened,
worked on his memoirs, and painted in
acrylics, something he had begun doing while
at St. John's. In addition to enjoying quiet
activities near their home, the Boyds traveled
extensively and returned several times to
Santa Fe, where he gave lectures on topics
ranging from Shakespeare to T.E. Lawrence.
In 1994, at the age of 72., Mr. Boyd together
with several other survivors of the Arnhem
mission repeated their parachute jump over
the Netherlands to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem and to
raise money for the Airborne Forces Charities
of his regiment.
Mr. Boyd voice lingers on for many friends
like Jorge Aigla: "When Stuart retired in
1989, he asked me to take over his office. In
that space, I still sometimes hear him laughing, telling me (and us): 'ALL is well, my boy,
andallSHALLbewcll! '" ♦
predictable, conditioned suggestion that
Pavlov be expunged from the senior
reading list.
Dean Neidorf reported that the
Annapolis Faculty, in response to student
sentiment, was considering whether or not
to abaJ1don the practice of awarding
honors. After a lengthy silence, Harris and
Jones asked qu estions of Dean Neidorf,
wondering ifhe meant the Annapolis
campus of St. John's, and ifhe meant there
was consideration of whether or not to
award honors at graduation, and received
solemn assurances that all was as he had
said. The Dean went on to say that the
graduating class on the other campus had
registered the complaint that the system of
awaiding honors was oppressive and
offensive. Mr. Sacks remarked, somewhat
cryptically, that the oppressed should not
feel oppressed.... The discussion about
honors continued, with considerable time
spent on Descartes aJ1d "warm, effusive
feelings" and other comments which flew
too fast for this reporter to catch either
their significance or their relevance,
terminating in a masterly synthesis of
Greek ru1d Christian worlds by Mr. Long,
who urged us to think of honors as like
some Olympic Garnes to which many were
called but few chosen ... ♦
MICH AEL C. S LAKEY, C LASS OF 1985
Michael C. Slakey, Annapolis class ofI985,
died of cancer on January 30, 2.005, in
Lannion, Brittany, a region of western
France. He was 42..
Michael met his wife, Victoire Devaud
Slakcy, a French citizen, in Washington,
D.C., and they spent most of their married
life in France. Michael had a full life as a
painter and musician, and as an organic
farmer especially devoted to the care of his
land. He leaves behind his wife and three
children, Theo, Fay, and Yarrow.
H e is the son of Marion and Thomas
Slakey, a tutor emeritus and former dean of
St. John's, and the brother of Tom, Jr.
(SF81); Bill (SF88); and the Rev. Anne
Slakcy (SF88).
"Michael had an exceptional capacity to
take pleasure in what he was doing at the
moment, whether it was in the hard work of
cutting his own trees with an axe and
smoothing planks with an adze, weeding
and planting his garden, sitting and playing
his guitar or his Irish flute, or painting,"
his father wrote.
M UNTt;F. 8U UIIJAJLY, JK., CLA:>i> ot· 1947
Monte Ferris Bourjaily, Jr., who had been
the publisher and editor of Globe Syndicate
since 1977, died Jan. 4 at his home in Front
Royal, Va., after a heart attack.
Mr. Bourjaily was born in ClevelaJ1d, Ohio,
and raised across the country as he accompanied his journalist parents on their
assignments. He served in the Army Signal
Corps in Europe during World War II.
Early in his career, he was a reporter for a
newspaper in Floyd County, Va., and worked
in the U.S. House of Representatives radio
gallery. From 1952 to 1966, he worked for
Army Times as an associate editor and
author of the " Kibitzer's Corner" column.
He then was an executive assistant in
Washington for the Oklai1orna-based architectural, engineering, and planning furn of
Hudgins, Thompson, Ball and Associates.
Survivors include his wife of 61 years,
Marietta Dake Bourjaily of Front Royal, Va.,
and six children.
MARGARET NEUSTADT RANooL
Maigaret Neustadt RaJ1dol of Baltimore,
who was married to former St. John's Dean
John 0. Neustadt, died at her home in
Baltimore in December 2.004. She was 83,
and had been a longtime civil-rights activist
in the city. She was well known for her work
with Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc., the
Maryland Commission on Human Relations,
and American Civil Liberties Union.
MI CHAEL TOBCN, FORMER BVGMEMBER
Michael E. Tobin died April 2.1, at the age of
79, at his home in Tesuque, New Mexico.
He served as a member of the college's
Board ofVisitors and Governors from
1994-2000.
Mr. Tobin was born in Philadelphia. He
lettered in fencing and soccer at Central
High School. He attended the University of
Pennsylvania until he was drafted into the
U.S. Army, where he served in Europe.
After the war, he remained in France to
study classical piano. Although mus ic
remained one of his passions throughout his
life, Mr. Tobin returned to complete his
studies at Penn's "Wharton School of
Business. He inoved to New York to launch
a career in finance, later joining the firm
of Arthur Young and Company. There he
worked in bank and securities consulting
and became partner in charge of the
Chicago and Western offices.
As president of the Midwest Stock
Exchange, he pioneered automation for the
exchange, making it the second-largest
market in the U.S. by dollar volume. He later
became chairman and CEO of the American
Bank and Trust Company of Chicago. That
bank became the sponsor of a program that
sent teachers in Chicago's Paideia program
(which introduced Socratic seminars to
public-school classrooms) to the Graduate
Institute in Santa Fe.
Throughout his life, Mr. Tobin was actively
committed to the arts, and when he moved
to Santa Fe, he became an ardent supporter
of the Santa Fe Symphony. He also continued to cultivate a lifelong interest in world
history and Western literature at St. John's,
where he took part in comm unity seminars.
Mr. Tobin is survived by his wife, Judith
Brown Tobin; his children Michael, Jr.,
Allegra Love, and Corey; a stepson, Brett
Sylvestri and wife Virginia; and four
grandchildren.
EMIL MAsSA, FlUEND OF T HE MEEM LIBRARY
Dr. Emil J. Massa, who died in October
2.004, took an interest in St. John's College
as early as the mid-197os. Perhaps he fust
visited on one of his regular trips to Santa Fe
to attend the city's world-famous opera. By
1992., Dr. Massa had included the Meern
Library in his estate plan. Now, his bequest
{T
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St. John's College . Spring 2005
will fund an endovm1ent for maintenance of
the library's collections.
Dr. Massa settled in Denver, Colo., as an
orthopedic surgeon in 1960. Born into a
first-generation immigrant family in the
Cleveland, Ohio, area, he attended
Dennison College in connection with his
military service, followed by medical school
at Northwestern University. Dr. Massa was
keenly aware of the value of a good education-not only professionally, but spiritually
as well. Following his formal schooling, he
became an avid reader and bibliophile of
broad and formidable intellect, drawn
especially to the humanities ru1d liberal arts
and sciences.
Dr. Massa was always questioning,
confronting his ideas with those of others
and trying to discern the best way to live.
He found it in his appreciation of fine workmanship of all kinds-books and the craft of
bookbinding, art, music, fine automobiles,
and wine-but most of all in his ongoing
personal search for truth. No great idea, he
believed, can flourish without serious
conversation, one of the highest activities in
which humans can engage. To enter the
conversation in earnest, we must know what
has been said already. For this, as Dr. Massa
knew, the best education is a study of the
greatest books ever written.
A LSO NOTED:
FRED ALEXANDER (class ofi937) , December
2.2., 2.004
LurH ER BLACKJSTON (A68), January 18, 2.005
MICHAEL B LUME (A78) , February 7, 2.005
} A.MPS H. C 1moERS (SFGI70), October 9,
2.004
WJLLL\M C. H ALL (class of1946), December
18, 2.004
ROWLAND ALFRED JONES (class ofx949),
February 2.1, 2.005
GEORGE L YON, JR. (class ofx940), January
14, 2.005
D UNCAN M CDONALD, former An napolis
tutor, January 2.4, 2.005
ERICH NUSSBAUM ( class of 1945), March 18,
2.005
HAROL D OAV1 0 Runm (Ao4), December
2.004
DEBORAH MICAEL TIIIELKER (A79), April 17,
2.005
J AMES TINDALL (class ofi949), March 2.4,
2.005
)
�44
COMMUNITY
F OR T H E
S AKE
O F
Miss HucHEY-COMMERS LEAVES ST. JOHN'S
WITH A PASSION FOR COMMUNITY EDUCATION.
LEARNI N G ,
LEARNING
FOR T H E
SAKE
OF
COMM UNI TY
sv Ea,,. Hucttsv-COMMEas, A05
hroughout.high school my
image of college was a place
where people came together
to explore the knowable
world with gusto; I envisioned lively discussions and
a feeling of fulfilJment when I turned in
each assignment. I was interested in a kind
oflearning that would involve my whole
being- that would inform not only which
answer I put dovm on the test but also teach
me how to live in a more thoughuul way
once I stepped outside the classroom. And
I was interested in sharing this kind of
learning with other people who were
engaged in the same activity. I was fortunate
to find St. John's.
As an underclassman what I loved most
about the Program was the discussion.
How well I remember staying up until one
in the morning after my first seminar talking with my hallrnates about the character
of Odysseus in Homer's Iliad, or, much
later, my euphoria after reading Plotinus,
who, in his way of speaking about God
without personification, gave me just the
insight I needed to begin to talk about the
word of God in the Book ofJohn for my oral
examination. I learned what an amazing
thing it is to have a really good seminar, in
which the conversation takes its own
course, free of any student attempting to
determine its direction, and in which something completely new and unexpected is
clarified out of the chaos of my own reading.
Long after the newness of St. John's wore
off, I continued to find myself in unexpectedly thoughtful conversations, often in the
lunchroom with someone I didn' t know, or
with the girls on my hall while brushing
teeth after seminar.
Many of the books we read deal with the
question of what it means to live a good and
virtuous life. Reading and discussing these
T
books changed, among other things, the
way I thought about my future. When I
came to St. John's, J knew that I wanted to
be a teacher. In my previous teaching
experiences, I had enjoyed helping students
discover the fun of learning, and showing
them that they were capable of more than
they had believed. After coming to
St. John's and reading so many books that
applied directly to my life, I became interested in finding a way of teaching that would
provide students with the opportunity to
make the clear connection between what
they were learning in class and their lives
outside of school. Before, it had seemed
enough for me to help students bring themselves as whole people to their learning, and
what I had hoped to accomplish as a teacher
had rested in empowering individuals by
helping them enter the world oflearning;
now I saw it was equally important that they
turn back to their daily lives as snidentsthat they thus learn how to live thoughtfully
as well as learn vibrantly. Teaching enlarged
its scope then; I came to see it as the work of
strengthening a society.
As a resuJt, I became interested in the
Waldorf School, which is based on the
writings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf
Steiner. The summer following my sophomore year, I was fortunate to get a Hodson
internship to work in a Waldorf School for
the remainder of their school year. In the
process of giving its students a balanced
education, including art, music, and
handwork, the Waldorf School also seeks
to awaken in students an awareness of
themselves as a part of a social and natural
whole-and to prepare them to make
thoughuul decisions about the way that they
act as citizens of this whole. In addition the
Waldorf School is an example of the way
that philosophical ideas can be implemented in the world. It turned out that it
{ THE
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St. John 's College. Spring aoo5 )
provides an education much like the one
that Socrates describes in the Republic,
the education of the future philosopherk.ings: certain kinds of music arc played and
stories told based on the students' level of
development.
The summer after my junior year, I
received another Hodson grant to intern
with the Nelson County Museum of Rural
History in central Virgina, where I learned
about the work of educating an entire
community. Dttring the internship, J helped
lead an oral-history workshop for fourthand fifth-graders, in which we invited senior
citizens to be interviewed on tape. Everyone
benefited from this experience: the older
people were happy to share their stories and
spend time with the students, and the
snidents showed surprise and pleasure at
what the seniors told them about life during
the Depression. History became real for
these students through conversations with
their elders, once again demonstrating the
importance of dialogue to meaningful
learning. I believe that such dialogue is not
only important for education but also
essential for seeing oneself as part of a
larger whole- as a citizen of a locality where
one's actions have a direct and tangible
effect on the community.
Since becoming a student at St. John's,
I have been impressed by how much
learning depends upon interaction with
other people. One night in seminar, toward
the end of the semester, I felt weighed down
and found myself participating little in the
discussion. I was stopped after class by
another student who asked me my thoughts
on the conversation. I expressed my frustration, and we shared anecdotes about the
tension we felt while sitting in seminar,
often caught between interrupting the flow
of conversation and wanting to clarify a
particular point for ourselves. It was so
45
{ ST U D ENT V OI CES}
{STUDENT VOIC E S}
refreshing to talk to a classmate like this
that I began to speak more vigorously and to
feel more impassioned about our seminar.
When I returned to my room that night I
had gotten my energy back for the Program.
There is something amazing about the
power of conversation. Not only do we
uncover ideas and get co ask ourselves
questions we would never have thought
about on our ovm, but we are also able to
discuss the learning process itself, to realize
what is standing in the way, and above all to
become connected once again with our
passion for learning. When we learn
through dialogue, our relationship to
learning is not distinguishable from our
relationship to ocher people. Through that
human relationship, we are able to pursue
truth and knowledge as whole beings.
In the Republic Socrates divides the soul
into three parts: the highest is the intellect,
the lowest, the desiring part, and that which
connects these is the spirited part, or
thumos. When I said at the beginning of my
talk that I wanted to bring my whole self to
learning, I meant that I wanted the spirited
part of me to be just as involved in the
conversation in its own way as the intellectual part. Spiritedness not only asks but
embodies the question, "Why is this
important to me?" Even in the most
abstract discussion, something must be
at stake for the conversation to live and
breathe, for us to find ourselves in it.
That's the thing about St. John's- through
our interaction with the people around us
and, by means of the texts, with the great
thinkers of our culture, we enter into
learning with all parts of the soul and we
discover that there is little chat does not
interest us.
At St. John's we call ourselves a community of learning. My time here, as well as my
summer internships, has driven home for
{ THE
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me the truth that in order for either to be
ftilly what it is, community and education
must not be separate. Thinking along these
lines, during my fall and winter breaks this
year I have worked with teachers, students,
and community leaders in Nelson County
to design a program for high school
students in which they will learn about
the workings oflocal government by
conducting research, attending meetings,
discussing issues, and writing articles
for the newspaper about what they are
learning. Starling this fall, I will coorclinate
the program for a year; beyond that, I am
excited about making community education the focus in my career. Indeed, I am
indebted co St. John's for helping me
find such a strong focus for my career as
a teacher.
When my parents told me they would be
unable to help me pay tuition at St. John's,
I began to fill out application forms for as
many local and national scholarships as I
had time to apply for. I knew that St. John's
was the right school for me, and I believed
that somehow it would be possible for me to
go. I was extremely fortunate in chat a
Ruritan club, a local church, and a private
foundation assisted me at different times.
At first it seemed awkward co be receiving
money from others; however, after the first
time that I went to the Episcopal church
service to thank the parish for its help, the
experience of being a scholarship recipient
changed. When I stood up to telJ the
congregation about my work at St. John's
and saw so many smiling faces looking back
at me, I realized I was not alone in my
endeavor, financial or academic.
It is easy for us to consider our education
as something we obtain ourselves, for
ourselves. What I've realized in the course
of talking with my sponsors is that this is
not true. An education is brought about
through the efforts of many people and if
all goes weJJ, many people will be the
beneficiaries of that education. To put it
more strongly, an education is a gift from a
community to a community. I've come to
the place of being able to accept help with
deep gratitude, joyfuIJy looking forward to
the time when I can give back, and aJJowing
the boundary between myself and my
community to become less distinct. ♦
�{ALUMNI AssocrATION NEws}
FROM THE ALUMNI
AssoCIATION
PRESIDENT
•
•
•
Dear Alumni,
•
Even at St. John's
College, technology
changes quickly.
Last year, the
college and the
Alumni Association
instituted an online
register, which provided little more
than contact information for alumni from
both campuses and all programs. Thanks
to all of you who registered for your commitment and patience during a bumpy
implementation process.
This year, the online register is being
replaced with an Online Alumni Community, a user-friendly, flexible, and powerful
tool to help you connect with fellow alumni
in many different ways. This new virtual
community offers:
• Powerful search features to help you
find and connect with other alumni.
The site is designed to allow alumni
to conduct a search for special networking-for example, look for alumni
working in the Jcgal field in New York
City. As more alumni become
•
•
•
•
•
• Phoco galleries from special alumni
events, such as chapter picnics,
outings, and Homecoming, can be
posted here.
It is a wonderful and flexible tool for
staying connected with others and with the
college, and we' ve only begun to use just a
fraction of the features available. One area
ripe for development is a Career Services
section that allows Johnnies to learn of job
openings, post resumes, and advertise
positions that are just right for Johnnies.
If you're concerned that the list could be
used for "spamming," don't worry: the
system has safeguards built in to avoid
alumni or unauthorized users from
creating lists from the system.
Your friends can only reach you through
the Online Community if you have registered as a member. As of May, close to r,600
alumni have joined the community, with
our younger alumni really taking the lead.
It only talccs a few minutes, and approval is
most often automatic-so do it today. You
should also encourage your friends to
register, so you can reach them through this
virtual "Johnnie homecoming."
members, this search feature will be
more helpful.
Announcements for alumni and other
college events around the country.
Member forums where you can start a
conversation or enter one in progress.
Information about Alumni Association
chapters' contact information and
activity schedules.
Faculty listings from both campuses
with e-mai l addresses.
" Meeting space" for special groups of
alumni. One current group is Military
Family Alumni, for alumni who are
either serving in or associated with
the military. Mary Ruffin (Ao4)
started the group after marrying a
Naval officer.
"Personal space" where you can share
information about yourself with ocher
alumni, including your personal page,
buddy list, web log, photo album, and
resume.
Class home pages, class notes, and
e-mail lists to help you stay in touch
with members of your class. Alumni
notes from The College magazine will
be posted here, and classnotes you
submit through the online community
will also be printed in the next edition
of the magazine.
Instant messaging.
A process that allows you to easily
upload your photos of special events
(a wedding) or special people (the new
baby) to share with your classmates.
It was a busy year for Alumni Association
chapters across the country, with the usual
mix ofhmchcons and receptions, potlucks,
picnics, and seminars. (With or without
a potluck, Johnnies still turn out for a
seminar.)
Here's a look at what's happening:
• Albuquerque had six seminar/
potlucks; Austin had IO seminars,
Baltimore enjoyed five seminars and
hosted a networking seminar for
juniors and seniors with the Annapolis
and Washington, D.C., chapters.
• The revival continues for the Boston
chapter, which reported an "excel{T
tt &
Co LL E c e . St. John's College. Spring 2005
GRANT PRESERVES
GYM PLAQUES
le talces 2.0 laps around the suspended
wooden track in Iglehart Hall to complete a
mile. That gives determined joggers and
walkers ample opportunity co read the
plaques lining the wall of the gymnasium in
Annapolis, reminders from past generations
of}ohnnie athletes that every sport requires
the best effort every time.
Thanks to a grant from the Alumni
Association, the plaques look better than
they have in years: 23 of 38 plaques in the
collection, commemorating the alumni of
the years 1871-192.8, have been cleaned and
restored. The association provided a grant
for the work, which cost $3,800. These
plaques are of both nostalgic and historic
value to alumni, being among the very few
publicly displayed relics of the college's postCivil War through post-World War I period.
A ss O C I A TI ON
N EWS }
The class of 1889 left behind the motto
Respice Finem- "look to the encl." The class
ofr916 was a bit more Spartan in its athletic
philosophy: Aul Vince,-e Aut Mori- "co conquer or die, death or victory." The Latin
phrases embodied by those athletic teams of
years past represent a time when St. John's
competed with the likes of Navy and Johns
Hopkins in football and lacrosse, and usually
won. Lofty values that transcended athletics
were also emblazoned on the plaques:
Omnia Vinci, Veritas, "truth conquers all
things," declared the class ofr927.
The plaques were cleaned and oxidized to
a dark statuary finish, with an architectural
coating applied. "Now you can really sec
chem- even read the names-and from the
court floor no less," says Athletic Director
Leo Pickens. "Until the cleaning they were
just like dark holes on the wall. The details
on many of them are almost architectural
and quite lovely." ♦
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 elected 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 eve ms of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary-Barbara Lauer, SF76
'freasurer- Bill Fant, A79
Cetting•tlze-Word•OutAction Team ChairLinda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mai/i,,gaddress-Alumni Association,
St. John's College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or n6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
To register, go to:
www.stjohnscollege.cdu; click on "alumni"
and follow the directions from there.
For the past, present, and future,
Glenda H. Eoyang
President
St. John's College Alumni Association
lent" year with 13 well-attended
seminars, many of which attracted
new faces. Boulder enjoyed a poetry/
reading potluck along with 10 seminars; Chicago had seven seminars,
and there were six seminars-one with
dinner-for the Greater Puget Sound
chapter.
• As one of the largest chapters, New
York is very busy: five seminars, seven
movie nights, a reception picnic, and a
holiday party. The chapter expanded
its Web site significantly this year.
• In Northern California, eight seminars
and a seminar/picnic at Stag's Leap;
one seminar and one outing to the
Philadelphia Sha.Jcespeare Festival for
Philly, and 12 seminars for Pittsburgh.
• In Portland, alumni have been meeting
regularly since October and have had
AROUND THE
CHAPTERS
{AL U M N I
four seminars since July. A tea party
and six seminars took place in Santa
Fe, six in Southern California, r2 in
the Twin Cities, where the chapter
completed a yearlong plunge into the
theme of ""Who are we as Americans?·'
• A highlight for the Washington, D.C.,
chapter was "A Day in the Country,"
hosted by Sharon Bishop (A65), with
Eva Brann leading a seminar. The
chapter will return this spring to
Bishop's country place for another day
in the country with a great book.
• In seven other areas, reading groups
are considering organizing chapters,
or the association is reaching out to
alumni to gauge the interest in getting
a group of Johnnies together. ♦
- COMPILED BY CAROL FREEMAN, AGl94
}
PLAQUES LINING THE WALLS OF IGLEHART H ALL
ARE GLEAMING ONCE AGAIN, THANKS TO AN
ALUMNI AsSOCIATION GRANT.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed below for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
actfrities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
BALTIMORE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
Deborah Cohen
505-275-9012
410-472'-9158
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
AUSTIN
John Strange
210-39 2-5506
Bev Angel
512,-926-7808
CHICAGO
Rick Ligh tburn
lightburn@
earthlink.net
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Lexy
Bartlette
817-i21-9rx2
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein
72~46-1496
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST.PAUL
Carol Freeman
612,-822-3216
{ THE
Co
LL E c E.
NEWYORK
Daniel Van Doren
914-g49-68rr
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey
lake@law-works.com
NORTHERN CALIF.
Deborah Farrell
415-i31-8804
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619•423-4972
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-4151
St. John 's College. Spring ,ioo5 }
SEATTLE
Amina Brandt
206-465"'7781
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562,-426-1934
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Jean Dickason
301-699•6207
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Julia Ward
413-648-0064
�{ST.
JOHN'S
FOREVER}
"COEDS INVADE
ST. JottN's"
n the fall of 1950, the faculty
of St. John's College voted to
admit women the following year.
As Richal'd Weigle later recounted
in his book Recollections ofa
St. Johns President, the vote was
to be kept secret until the college's Board
ofVisitors and Governors t0ok up the
matter. One eal'ly plan suggested the
possibility of establishing a women's
college with the St. John's PI"ogram.
The enrollment of women was in pal't
a response tO the college's difficulty in
building enrollment and achieving
financial stability. But the overriding
reason, Weigle said, was that women
wanted to be here.
When the news leaked out shortly after
the boal'd's approval of the matter, he
wrote, "students were in an uproar.
A protest meeting was held in the Great
Hall of McDowell ...just before students
left for Christmas vacation .... Students
believed that discussions in serninal's and
tutorials would suffer and that women
were not up to the rigors of the St. John's
Program," Weigle wrote.
The banner headline in the Evening
Capital was set in type just a bit smaJ ler
than the news of a big development in
the Korean Wal'. It read: "Local College
to Offer Program to Limited Number
of Girls."
A yeal' later, the Washington Post
greeted the arrival of women with a photo
spread and the headline, "Girl Students
First to Enter Old College." The article
quoted some male students as saying, "we
were afraid... that they were going to be a
bunch of giggly girls, only interested in the
Naval Academy." The men, the article
concluded, were pleasantly surprised to
note that the women took the rigors of the
Program as seriously as they did.
This fall mal'ks the 50th anniversary of
the 1955 graduation of those pioneering
women. Several members of the class are
expected back for Homecoming in
Annapolis this fall, where their role in
forever changing the face of St. John's will
be celebrated. ♦
{ TH E
Co LL E c
&•
St. John's College . Spring 2005
FEMALE STUDENTS LEAVE CLASS IN MCDOWELL
HALL WITH TUTORS AND CLASSMATES,
DATE DUE
I
}
I
�S!JOHN'S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS• SANTA. f'&
PUBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P. 0. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND z1404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
PERIODICALS
POSTACE PAID
�
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
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St. John's College
Coverage
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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 pages
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, Spring 2005
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 31, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2005.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
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, NM
Date
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2005
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
Contributor
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor)
Hartnet, John (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Borden, Sus3an
Goyette, Barbara
Hughey-Commers, Erin
Maguran, Andra
Mattson, Jo Ann
Naone, Erica
Weiss, Robin
Martin, Roger H.
Verdi, John
Donnelly, Jennifer A.
Myers, Linda
Hughey-Commers, Erin
The College
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